Chase the Sun
by El Nino1
Summary: The era of the sword is coming to an end, but Roy refuses to be made obsolete. RxM, SxZ
1. battery 0

Disclaimer: The following contains characters and concepts that are NOT the property of the author. They are the intellectual property of Nintendo, HAL Laboratories and their associates. This work of fanfiction is NOT endorsed by the original creators and is NOT in any way meant to insult the original work. The author has received NO monetary benefit from this piece of shit.

**Warning: Later chapters contain yaoi/yuri **(aka male and female homosexual relationships). Not your thing? That's cool. Back button is up there.

A/N: Story to include multiple chapters, many characters, and an interpretation of Smash "canon" that can be considered unorthodox. Its theme is also a little too serious for a Smash Bros. story, but it's all I got. Utilizing an idea borrowed from Kei Toume's _Kuro Gane,_ with atmosphere provided by memories of Wong Kar Wai's _Ashes of Time, _the author brings you this monstrosity. Enjoy, or weep bitter tears, whatever. Comments appreciated.

* * *

_**Chase the Sun**_

_Battery: start_

(0)

Marth had made a mistake in not killing him.

They both should have been laid to rest years ago.

In the back of his throat, Roy tasted bitter copper. A drop of water had fallen from the edge of the roof, and the feel of it treading down his face brought back a memory, a hazy dream of chasing after a blue cape through a downpour.

Another place, another time.

There had been a desperate grab, a grip of wet fabric in his hand—and a fist that caught him off guard when it hit him in the face. The world spun and cut the inside of his cheek against his teeth. He fell back, stars in his vision, as the cloth slipped through his fingers.

Since then, rain on his skin would always invoke the taste of blood.

Roy left it there, the droplet rolling down toward his jaw. He wanted that memory. Every mule needed a carrot dangled in front of it—a reason, an excuse—to trudge on and on, no matter what load was sagging heavy on its back. He was no different.

It didn't matter that his reason was a poisoned apple. So what? If you don't chase death, it chases you. What was wrong with reversing the roles?

Nothing—not if you deserved it, anyway. And if he deserved anything, Roy figured it had to be that.

He took a drink from the wine gourd at his side. Wished that droplet had trailed closer to his mouth.

Desert rains were the sweetest, he had been told.

The door next to him opened.

"We're ready for you now."

Polite, as if they hadn't left him sitting outside like a dog. He secured the gourd onto his belt and stood up to follow the official's assistant into the building. One hand steadied the sheathed sword at his hip.

The town leadership's main office looked like it had once served as a small schoolhouse. Legitimacy showed only in its well-swept floor and partially curtained windows. Money had been short, Roy guessed. The representative speaking for the council met him over a lopsided table. She did not offer the swordsman a seat, but when she spoke, her tone was not unfriendly.

"We are in need of someone like you."

The unnecessary details followed. Regime change at the central government, and corruption at the local level, had stopped the funding needed to maintain their defenses.

"Our militia was disbanded for political reasons…"

The last mayor had replaced what he felt was an uncontrollable unit of dissidents with a smaller police force that was loyal to him. But this new unit had been too inexperienced, too few in number as well, to handle armed aggression from the outside.

"…He is no longer with us."

The Red Canyon bandits were incredibly well-organized. They had operated out of the neighboring desert region since a time shortly after the town was established. They were confident enough now to view the desert as theirs, and powerful enough to make that claim. Their means to this end had often been brutal in the past. She emphasized that last point.

"We're training a new militia and trying to re-hire the members of the old one, but it's going to take time. Most of them had to leave to find work elsewhere."

She looked Roy up and down with sharp, brown eyes. She could not hide her skepticism. A foreigner couldn't possibly understand what he was up against. Certainly not this red-haired teenaged boy in a dusty crimson cape, even if the sheath at his side was weather-worn and the hilt of his weapon was tarnished with use.

But they needed fools like this one. No one else would accept such a dangerous post in an isolated town like theirs. Not for the kind of pay they were offering.

"We need someone to watch them and keep us updated on their activities. You will be responsible for alerting us in the event of a raid or anything else that would raise serious concern. Do you think you can do that?"

Roy nodded once.

She remained unconvinced. But still, very desperate.

"It's better to walk away if you have any doubts." She looked down and opened a desk drawer. "I'd rather you not end up like the last one."

A dirty metal headband dropped onto the tabletop.

"He disappeared two days ago."

Roy's eyes fixed on the jewel set into the gold band. Then on the dried blood that covered it in streaks, like dull paint.

"So, your timing really couldn't have been better."

Her voice was tired. Roy met those eyes once more. Her brown face looked young, but there were a few strands of grey in her neatly tied black hair.

The swordsman's voice cracked when he spoke, as if from disuse. "Where can I find them?"

"By Red Canyon itself, northeast of here. My assistant will provide you with a map and coordinates and anything else you might need."

Roy found himself reaching for the headband on the table between them.

"It's yours," she told him.

He glanced at her. It wasn't like he had planned on letting them keep it in the first place.

"We are no longer in contact with the capitol," she explained. "This is all we can offer you for now. You'll get the rest of your fee later. If you leave it with my assistant, he can have it cleaned and appraised for you."

"No."

She looked at him strangely. It must have been something in his voice. But Roy wasn't about to explain.

The representative stood up when he made to leave.

"Just buy us some time," she said. "That's all I ask."

Already on his way to the door, he paused to turn and deliver a hasty bow. When she answered in kind, he was halfway out and gone.

Her assistant had a care package prepared. First aid supplies, rations, a map, water, tools.

"There's a room for you at the inn."

"I'm heading out now."

He blinked at the young swordsman. "It'll be night in a few hours."

"Good. Do I have transportation?"

"Yes. Follow me please."

When the man turned away, Roy lifted the headband to his mouth, and, very quickly, licked it where a drop of blood had fallen.

It didn't taste like Marth.

Things were looking up already.


	2. battery 1

A/N: Thanks for the reviews. Sorry about the updating speed. Will try to pick it up.

Disclaimer: The following contains characters and concepts that are NOT the property of the author. They are the intellectual property of Nintendo, HAL Laboratories and their associates. This work of fanfiction is NOT endorsed by the original creators and is NOT in any way meant to insult the original work. The author has received NO monetary benefit from this piece of shit.

* * *

(1)

It was the storm that did him in.

They got him because of the rain.

He collapsed a day following the first confrontation, after he had taken out the two they had sent after him. They were angry now, and he was on the run. He didn't bother to take proper care of himself. When the heat claimed him, it was a surprise. He realized his error a half-second too late, could only think—_oh._

Crumpled on the dry ground, he lapsed into a bad kind of sleep. Vultures and rodents would leave him be.

Then it rained. The water had no taste. It was cold, and the desert started to come back, black and white at first, then in faded colors. His body returned to him. He stirred awake.

His mind was all fuzz and static, but one thing stood out, a message to self—_get up._

With effort, he managed a few weak movements. His hand had lost the grip on his sword.

He groped around in confusion for a second. Then his fingers found something. He looked up.

The face above him leered back.

They had surrounded him.

"Guess you're not dead after all." The ugly smile hovering over Marth deepened. In a voice like venom: "But you're gonna wish you were."

If the rain had waited another few hours, they would have found him lifeless, and left him. Instead…

The large boot by his head drew back and slammed hard into his temple.

Darkness, again.

**x x x**

The horse was black as night and came with headlights. This was usually a good thing, but his enemies would see him coming if he used them.

"You can see in the dark, right?"

"Yes," the horse replied, "but can you?" It spoke in a smooth tenor.

"Dragons have excellent night vision."

"Are you a dragon then?"

"Maybe I am," Roy said.

"You don't look like a dragon."

"What would you know? You're a talking mechanical horse."

"Just an observation. No need to take offense."

"Whatever. All I need from you is less talking, more running."

"And in which direction are we headed?"

Roy paused. "Uh, you wouldn't happen to have a built-in navigation system, would you?"

It scoffed. "What do I look like?"

"Sorry."

Roy consulted the map and compass. He looked around. There wasn't much to see. Dry flatland around them. Mountains nearby, to the east and north.

"How are you on power?" Roy asked.

"I'm fine. The battery recharges itself when I move. Not bad, eh?"

"I've seen better," Roy said, unimpressed.

"Well, if that's the way you feel—"

"Just an observation," Roy insisted. "No need to take offense."

It scoffed again and remained silent.

"Head toward the mountains," Roy instructed. "Northeast. Go fast."

"Be careful, little man. Don't make me overheat."

"Don't you have a cooling system?"

"Yes, and an internal heater too."

"Then why you look so worried?"

"I'm not worried about me. I just presume you function better without second-degree burns. Fortunately, it's already past the peak temperature for the day. That lowers my cool-off periods. When night falls, it is going to be freezing. Are you prepared for _that?"_

"I'll have your internal heater to keep me warm. Take breaks if you have to, but I need you to run. And save some energy for the ride home."

"Is this going to end in a chase?"

"Only if I can't take care of all of them. I'll get most, but I can't guarantee that I'll get every last one."

"By 'take care of' you mean…"

"What do you think?"

"I beg your pardon, Master Idiot, but I thought this was a scouting mission, not a one-man raid. What are you going to do, storm the gates of the enemy stronghold and take down a criminal organization the size of a small army…on your own?"

The wry smile on Roy's face said it for him.

"I hope that sword of yours is a divine weapon of mass destruction, or else our partnership will be the shortest I have ever known."

"You're a running machine," Roy said. "Why your maker gave you a voice, I can't even guess. Don't ask questions. Just know that I have to do this. There are no other options."

"I thought humans always had a choice in what they did. Your philosophers are always talking about free-will, aren't they?"

"You're a smart horsie. Who made you?"

"I don't know his name. I only called him Master. He was a nice guy. I was the only horse he ever made. He rode into town on my back four years, six months, thirteen days ago. He left me with good people. And then…he went off by himself. Went into the desert. I haven't seen him since."

"You miss him?"

"Not really. I think he's probably doing fine. I am too."

"Okay," Roy said, and hauled himself onto the horse's back. "Then run now, and make him proud."

They went, no words exchanged over the pounding of hooves. The dust cloud around them was thick, but they kept a step ahead of it. The heat didn't matter, didn't slow them down, and as the hour wore on, Roy used his time to think. He hadn't admitted to himself yet that he didn't have a plan. Not one that would work, anyway. And all he could think at the moment was whether or not it would be safe to drink while riding a mechanical horse.

Twilight was setting when they came upon the bones.

Roy forced his ride to a sudden stop. He jumped off, cape flying, and came down running.

He crouched for a closer look.

The skeletal remains were human, picked clean and scattered apart by scavengers. It wore the torn remnants of what might have been a uniform. Roy gingerly lifted a rib and held it up close. A deep slash had been cut into it. The skull lying nearby was also similarly damaged, punctured on top of its crown. Not far away, a rusted pickaxe sat in the dirt, its handle broken.

The piece in his hand: _Just bone._

Roy felt relief.

"Have you ever seen this before?" he asked the horse.

"No. The last time I was out here, I was taking the indirect route. But I see it now. There are others. Do you see them?"

Roy stood up. The horse was right. Bones littered the surrounding field, half-buried among dust and brush. Most of them were tangled up in sun-eaten clothing.

These were the leftovers of a massacre, a killing that no one had even bothered to dig a mass grave for.

The winning side must have collected their own dead and left the others to rot. The tattered clothing on each corpse looked to be the same uniform.

"I have a question," Roy said to his companion. "What's the main source of income for the people in this town?"

"It's a Federation mining colony," the horse told him. "Most of the residents either work in the mines or in the processing mills."

"What do they mine here?"

"Precious metals and gemstones."

Roy pulled out the headband given to him by the council rep, eyes still on the field of bones. "Then can you tell me why no one in town seems to know that this is not real gold? Or do you suppose they're trying to scam me? Even the thieves knew it was worth more as a message than currency."

"Oh." The animal flattened its ears back like it did when running. "That is a possible scam. But it could also be an honest mistake. In all its years of operation, the colony has never found any minerals of commercial value in these mountains."

"Then how do they survive? What are the bandits after?"

"The colony was subsidized by the Federation. They have been venturing into other trades since then. The bandits may not know that there is no gold to be found here."

Roy said nothing for a while. He reached down and took the broken pickaxe in hand, felt its weight. Standing up, he again looked toward the mountain on the horizon.

The horse snorted out of surprise when Roy grabbed it and got onto its back once more.

"Run."

**x x x**

As the rain came down harder, Pico contemplated his chances of finding a new job. He was overqualified for this one. He could do much better than Red Canyon. Place had no scenery, and Goroh's group was nothing but an idiot convention. Which would explain how two of 'em managed to get whacked by some backwater village kid wielding a sword.

Pico reached over his shoulder and fingered the hilt of the blade on his back. He didn't like these types of weapons, but he could probably sell it somewhere. Or keep it as a memento. Whatever. He sure as fuck wasn't going to give it to Goroh.

The mercenary glanced over to his present company. Blood Falcon had been eyeing the weapon ever since Pico wordlessly claimed it from the young swordsman they had defeated. That is, when he wasn't busy eyeing their new captive instead.

This only served to confirm Pico's suspicion that underneath all that spandex and steroids-abuse, Falcon really was just a creepy homosexual pervert.

And that made perfect sense to Pico, since Blood Falcon was, in fact, cloned from a creepy homosexual pervert.

It had been raining for a while. Pico didn't mind. His home-world had seen much worse. And judging from the lecherous grin on Falcon's face as he walked behind the captured swordsman, he didn't mind either.

Humans were disgusting. Pico knew all about that. He'd seen too much of that. Even more reason to get out of this operation. Lousy company. It was time to end his contract with Goroh, start on something better.

With another glance, Pico noticed that their prisoner had stopped walking. The kid had trouble climbing. They made him walk in front of them, and he sometimes slipped as they forced him up sharp inclines and rocky surfaces. He was bound at the wrists and around the arms. Falcon held the leash and would kick him on occasion to keep him going.

Now the swordsman stood with his eyes closed, face tilted toward the sky. His lips were slightly parted. The rain had washed away blood and plastered dark blue hair against a pale delicate face.

Pico stared at the image before him. Something was wrong here.

Falcon gave their prisoner a rough push from behind. The kid slipped and went down. When he caught himself on his knees, he stopped and glared over his shoulder. Falcon grabbed him by the upper part of his arm and hauled him to his feet.

"This ain't a parade, princess!"

The human clone had completely missed what had been communicated at him.

The alien did not.

As an outsider, Pico had put extra effort into studying human facial expressions. After years of experience, he was able to read his opponents' moves well before they made them, which made it easier for him to incinerate them with laser cannons.

Goroh's men had been pretty dense, yes, but they had also been very well-armed. Their killings weren't just a matter of luck.

That cold glance over a shoulder hadn't been the look of some country bumpkin from a pre-industrialized society. There had been something cunning in there. An elegant calculation.

And a promise.


	3. battery 2

A/N: Revised draft. Thanks for the reviews. Update speed will improve from here on. Comments and critique appreciated.

Disclaimer: The following contains characters and concepts that are NOT the property of the author. They are the intellectual property of Nintendo, HAL Laboratories and their associates. This work of fanfiction is NOT endorsed by the original creators and is NOT in any way meant to insult the original work. The author has received NO monetary benefit from this piece of shit.

* * *

(2)

It looked like pieces of a human forearm. The upper-arm disappeared underneath a boulder not far from the base of the mountain. Roy found a broken femur on the other side. The rest of the body was crushed beneath the giant rock. The skeleton wore the same uniform as the others they had seen.

He looked up the face of the mountain. The slope seemed steeper now. He didn't know how fast a boulder could roll.

Maybe that depended on whether or not someone waited at the top. But it was nightfall now. No one would see him coming.

His hand found the wine. He untied it from his belt and took a good long drink.

"Here."

The animal turned away from the offered flask. "We can't drink that stuff."

"Why not?"

"It interferes with our internal machinery."

"Well, it doesn't interfere with mine."

The horse managed to look apprehensive. "Be careful with those kinds of drugs. I've only heard bad things about them."

"I'm okay. Trust me. I have experience. You don't, so you wouldn't know."

"I wouldn't want to. Some things that are euphoric in humans can be detrimental to the mind of a thinking machine. A simple poison, like wine, can make us amnesiac, or crazy, or worse."

Roy smiled at this, and he wasn't sure why. "Are you a thinking machine?"

"I am."

"Your maker was a funny guy."

The horse snorted. "No worse than the drunken wise-ass I'm looking at."

Roy saluted with the gourd and took another drink from it.

"Yeah," he said, "but I'm not looking for sanctuary here."

He tied the gourd at his belt again and shouldered the pack of supplies he had been given.

"Wait here," he told the horse. "If I'm not back in a couple days, I might be dead."

It simply looked back at him. "I want to advise against what you're planning."

"Don't worry. I'm coming back. And when I do, prepare to run."

"Of course. But there's…something you should know." It sounded a bit nervous. "Those people you are going to see…they ride machines that are much faster than me."

Roy thought about this. "Then I'll have to kill all of them," he whispered.

"Can you do it?"

"Yes. But if I don't, and they get me, feel free to run and save yourself."

There was a pause. "You," the horse said, "are a lot like the last one."

"Am I…?" Roy murmured. He fell silent.

"Few men worry about the fate of machines." It tilted its head at him. "I'm sorry. Did I bring up something unpleasant?"

"…What happened last time? You were the one that carried him, correct?"

"Yes, but he let me off three-quarters of the way and said that if he didn't come back I was to go home."

_That's so like him,_ Roy thought.

"I think," the horse said, "that you knew this other one, yes? You are not here to destroy a gang of criminals, or to help the people in that town. If the other one is alive, this is a rescue operation. If not, then it will be for revenge. Am I right?"

"Smart horsie." Roy reached up and scratched it behind its ears. "I bet he liked you."

He turned to go.

"Might I ask your name?" the horse said.

The swordsman looked back. "The name's Roy. What about you?"

"I was never given a name by my maker. But the other one, your one, he called me Knight Mare."

Roy tilted his head to the side. "I didn't know you were a girl."

She looked at him in dismay. "I wish you luck. With your eyesight and intelligence, you'll need it."

**x x x**

"Who do you think is in charge here?!"

Pico winced at the abnormally high-pitched whine. He hissed his annoyance rather than offering an answer, and flicked his tongue as a warning. Humans wasted time on a lot of ineffective words. They never understood the obvious. And Zoda had been human at some point, or so the rumors went.

Too bad the Boss Man was going to be gone for a while. Otherwise Pico wouldn't even have to deal with this walking freakshow. Goroh had headed out before this whole business went down, sights set on the championship at Mute City III, determined to get his chance now that Falcon was out of the game. Out forever, everyone said. Fans and competitors were still mourning that loss, but Goroh knew an opportunity when he saw one.

_Pathetic,_ Pico thought with a sneer. That moron wanted a grand prix victory more than he wanted the gold in these mountains.

The second worst mistake Goroh ever made was taking in Black Shadow's leftovers. This landed his already incompetent group of mentally-challenged thugs with that overgrown test tube abnormality trying to pass himself off as a racing legend. Maybe Goroh just had an unhealthy obsession with his former rival. Pico was beginning to think so. The Samurai had never beaten the original Falcon at anything, but against a clone with the intellectual capacity of a ten year old, Samurai always proved himself the better man.

Taking in Blood Falcon was, however, only the second worst mistake. The _worst_ mistake…

That would be the mental-asylum reject staring at Pico through dilated pupils, his bluish face contorted in a grimace. A soft humming could be heard from the med-box on his back as it fed a steady stream of fluids through the tube extending into the back of his neck.

Humans could be pitied, Pico decided, because they were just that feeble. The things they wanted—their greed for things they couldn't have—made them easy to manipulate; saw them easily trapped; got them killed more often than freak accidents. One had wanted power; the other wanted victory over a dead man. This one with the misfiring neural connections wanted anything the drugs continuously pumped into his bloodstream told him he wanted.

And right now, those drugs were telling him that he wanted the prisoner Pico had brought in the day before.

"You were asleep," the alien stated flatly. Zoda crashed every few weeks or so when his body reached the limits of its drug tolerance. Whenever that happened he ended up comatose for anywhere from several hours to several days. Nothing could wake him up when he was in that state.

"So you let those genetically-inferior rodents tamper with _my_ specimen?!"

Pico shrugged. "Not _my_ problem, _Zodaaaaaa…"_

"Where is it now?!"

"Brig." Goroh's men had been taking turns beating the hell out of that kid all day. He wasn't going to last too long. "Revenge for the two they lost."

"That doesn't_ matter!"_

"Then hurry before they start getting creative."

Zoda stormed down the darkened hall, footsteps thudding heavily against the wooden planks.

Pico flicked his tongue at the retreating form. As long as that lunatic was gone, it didn't matter to Pico what he was into. The only reason they had bothered to take the kid alive was because Zoda had wanted them to.

Something was up. Freakshow never gave straight answers, and Pico hadn't dealt with him long enough to read him accurately. Psychos followed their own "logic." Zoda was crazy, _yessssss,_ but not frivolous.

His drugged-up tripped-out mind had seen something the others had not, kneeling over the corpses of Goroh's two men, both of whom had drawn their guns. Both had fired. One was then cut down quickly, throat slashed through to the bone, almost beheaded. The other lost his arm at the elbow, got sliced through the stomach, and bludgeoned on the back of the head.

Something about that didn't make sense. Swords weren't supposed to beat guns. No one—human, alien or android—would be able to move fast enough.

Whatever. If Zoda wanted to waste his time on some horror experiment to figure it all out, that was fine as long as he stayed out of Pico's face. That once-human thing had a voice that severely aggravated the alien's highly sensitive hearing.

His welcome departure now left Pico with a bad taste on his tongue. And only one thing would get rid of it. He headed in the direction of the shooting range.

But voices from outside caught his attention.

The mercenary pulled aside a curtain and stepped onto the walkway on the building's outer wall. From there he could glance down over the entire southwestern side of the dust-colored compound. On the outside, Goroh's base looked like a fortress blending into the red rocks of the mountain. On the inside, it was a maze of interconnecting shanties—above ground, at least. Below ground was another picture.

In the distance now, away from the main, low-level buildings, there were figures in motion. Goroh's men shouted to each other, running for a spot on the perimeter.

Pico reached for the rifle on his back. He aligned the barrel toward the distant target and searched with the sniper scope.

He zoomed in.

Goroh's men converged on something with all the prowess of a reckless mob, trying to suppress a volatile whirlwind. But it was a storm in the shape of a human being.

And they were getting cut down like stray weeds.

Luckily for them though, their backup approached with deadly speed: a red jumpsuit and flamboyantly purple helmet.

The mercenary curled his tongue in amusement.

Blood Falcon had joined the fray.


	4. battery 3

A/N: I know my update speed sucks. Thanks for the reviews, and thanks for the patience. Comments/criticism appreciated.

**Warning: some violence, mild homosexuality.**

Disclaimer: The following contains characters and concepts that are NOT the property of the author. They are the intellectual property of Nintendo, HAL Laboratories and their associates. This work of fanfiction is NOT endorsed by the original creators and is NOT in any way meant to insult the original work. The author has received NO monetary benefit from this piece of shit.

* * *

(3)

"Does it hurt?"

Roy looked up when the backside of cool fingers touched his forehead, on the exposed skin between his eyebrow and the bandage. "No," he said, so as not to appear weak, and regretted it the moment that touch retreated.

"Good."

The word was said with a familiar gentleness that Roy hated. Nobility reserved pity only for those it considered truly feeble, those too powerless to change their fate.

He refused to be so deserving of mercy.

"Don't let it trouble you, Roy. There's always next year, right?"

The sun was setting. Green fields became gold. It made Roy angry.

His time had passed.

"Are you coming inside?"

He stared for a short time at the hand outstretched toward him before taking it, and not because he needed help standing.

For a moment, the palms of two gloved hands pressed together, between royalty and a one-time boy general.

Marth let go as soon as the other was on his feet. The prince habitually brushed blue bangs out of his eyes and offered Roy a tempered smile. Then he headed back in the direction of the compound, his tall boots rustling the knee-high grass.

He grazed Roy's shoulder in passing.

"Marth."

"Hm?"

The rustling stopped. Roy kept his back turned. He would rather watch the sun hug the landscape than look at Marth's face, where a bandage concealed one graceful cheekbone.

The general's knuckles were still swollen from that desperate cheap shot.

"I didn't tell you before."

"Tell me what, Roy?"

"When I came back, I made myself a promise. I swore that if I didn't win this tournament, it would to be my last one."

From behind him, there was only silence.

"I didn't tell you," Roy continued, "because I didn't want you to go easy on me."

The sun burned afterimages into his eyes. He didn't care. Let it burn a hole. He wasn't about to turn around.

"I always knew," Roy muttered, surprised at the bitterness in his own voice, "that I would lose to you one day. Should have accepted that you were better than me. You always were."

The fact was one had been molded from the other. Ever since their beginnings as students, Roy had been marked as Marth's double, his almost-equal rival. Years of training together had made their manners of fighting so closely mirrored to each other that newly initiated recruits couldn't tell the difference. _("Are you two brothers? Or clones?"_) They could match each other hit for hit, wire to wire, and take it down to sudden death almost every time. Often, their blades never actually met during a match. Instead, each rush of deadly steel struck air as the other dodged and parried with ritualistic precision. This kind of learned behavior had become automatic for both, enough so that they even used real blades for demonstrations. They could read each other better than anyone else could—at least in battle.

It had been like this between them for so long: one soul, two blades.

As a team, they were unstoppable. But when they faced off against each other, only one victor was allowed, and one, more than the other, usually emerged the winner. So, their rivalry became as legendary as their teamwork.

Roy had a feeling he would miss that.

What he had gone up against earlier that day—the match that had taken away his chance at the championship—had closed the door on something he had worked his entire life to achieve. Its loss was not something he could articulate. It was the worse kind of defeat, to face a truth he couldn't deny or change. What his partner had become—Roy couldn't compete against that level of skill. Even if he were to fight and train for years and years, practicing sword forms and sparring until his hands bled…even then, the best he could hope for was second place. At worst, his rank would fall back to the bottom of the standings, right where he had started. It had taken all of his effort, his entire strength and will, just to earn a dignified loss, just to fall with measured grace to a swifter, surer sword.

Roy's technique was good. But Marth's was better.

"Good luck at the finals," Roy said. "I won't be there. But I know you'll make it. You're going to be something. Someday. With or without me."

_Don't turn around,_ the voice inside warned. _Don't turn around, and you can walk away from all of this._

_But it will be the end of both of you as a team._

The first step carried all his determination forward. It was meant to be final. It would have been if not for the sudden pull on his cape.

He stopped, but he didn't look back.

"Roy…"

He reached behind him without turning his head, took hold of the fabric and yanked it. But it refused to yield.

"Let go," Roy said. He was calmer than he thought he would be. There was no reason to get worked up. The fire had died at the end of their last fight.

"Please, don't…"

Roy jerked his cape forward, out of Marth's grasp. He marched on. He had to do this. It was his only way out of the loser's bracket. So it had to be goodbye. Maybe forever, if necessary.

Then, without warning, something hit him from behind. Roy surged forward with the momentum, catching most of their combined weight on his front foot. They both would have fallen otherwise. But he had learned a long time ago how to maintain balance under pressure, how to stare forward and not cry. Learned it as a child, perfected it as an adult. Things became easier like this. At least, less embarrassing.

Marth, on the other hand, clung onto his friend's back, arms holding the other tight, and hid his tears in Roy's hair, as if he had predicted this. As if he had been dreading this moment ever since the beginning.

There were obvious disadvantages to being short. Like trying to find a way to throw a taller guy off of you so you could make your dramatic depature. Even so, the red-haired swordsman couldn't stop a sudden rush of pride—this one was grieving over him, after all, this one, of all people.

But only a complete bastard would be proud of something like that.

"Get a grip on yourself."

"Don't hate me, Roy."

For a long time, only the grass moved.

Both waited for the other to break.

Yes, Roy admitted, it hurt. But he had to do it. Dammit. He had to learn how to be apart. Otherwise he would never be himself.

Against his other half, he could only ever be second best.

Roy's leg started to strain and his head wound ached, but Marth still showed no sign of letting go of him. The shorter fighter clenched his hands into fists, forgot about honor, spun around and tackled his rival to the ground.

The grass cushioned their fall. Only training kept the Altean prince from hitting his head against the dirt. Roy exploited a moment of breathless confusion to steal a kiss.

His hands held tightly onto Marth's arms, kept them pinned down against the other fighter's chest. Some part of his brain had forgotten that they weren't on the battlefield. Or maybe they were. He didn't let go until he heard a soft whimper from below, realizing that he had been pressing down too forcefully against the slighter body beneath him. His hands went other places then, over smooth fabric and lithe muscles. He settled on the firm lines of slender hipbones and realized he hadn't expected to even get this far. But backing down now was not an option. So, a momentary victory came at his rough handling of Marth's belt…

Until an abrupt knee nudging against his groin put all his current plans on ice.

Roy pushed against the earth with both palms and looked down.

They both stared at each other.

The grasses stirred with a light breeze. Twilight colored Marth's hair a dark shade of purple and gave his normally pale skin a pink hue. It could only have been the sunset's doing, Roy knew, because Marth never blushed. Not for any reason. Marth was infallible. Above all of this.

Except now Marth was below him, somehow, and looking as if a demon had stolen the air from his lungs.

_Concede to this fact,_ said Roy's inner voice_. Some things you will never have._

With a rough sigh, the general forced himself halfway to his feet.

_I always knew I would lose—_

Marth grabbed the front of Roy's shirt and pulled him back down as easily as he had thrown the shorter fighter out of the ring earlier.

"You did nothing wrong." It was a whisper in Roy's ear, like the prince himself, deceptively soft. "But it's only polite to ask for permission. Okay?"

That was not a request.

Marth kissed him next to the ear, near the jaw. The contact lingered. Roy held a breath. Then he watched as the prince removed the belt that Roy had fumbled with and set his own sword and scabbard on the ground at arm's length.

He looked up expectedly at the other.

In a minute, Roy's weapon landed on the ground next to Marth's.

The prince had unfastened the first two clasps at the neck of his own tunic. Slowly, he adjusted his knee and let Roy press down further against him.

Swallowing his heart, Roy brushed aside the bluish purple strands of hair that had fallen over Marth's eyes. He struggled to say the right thing, though he couldn't think past the rapid pounding in his chest.

"What do you want from me?"

Marth tilted his face upward, kissed him again.

Roy would carry the momentum of that kiss all the way to Red Canyon. It was the first thing he thought of when he woke up in a crevice on the mountainside, his cape wrapped around his upper body, sword under one arm, his neck sore from sleeping sitting up.

The dawn had already come. He cursed his misplaced time. He had only meant to rest for a moment. Now, he had wasted the hour on idle dreams.

He cursed, as well, his fool's brain. He had not needed any reminding of what he had once given up.

But in times of turmoil, it was a weakness of the mind to flee to its last remembered moment of peace.

The sun shone pale and pink. It looked the same here as it had there, on that field of knee-high grass where he had walked away from all that he knew and wanted, one cold morning, alone.

They would not meet again until years later. The world had changed by then. But some things remained uncompromising.

Roy had braced himself for a confrontation, had wanted it. He was shocked then, when a shoulder just barely grazed his in passing — and nothing more. Everything, everyone, had been brushing him off at the time, as if he did not matter.

He couldn't stand it.

So he had made a reckless lunge, reaching out to stop a retreat by brute force, to make up for his past mistake. This damn ritual — one always walking away from the other — it had to end. That was all he thought. The moment his hand closed over a damp cape, his urgency would earn him an unexpected blow to the face. The force of it threw him. The sting of it lingered. Kneeling on wet concrete, he swallowed blood and rain. That blue cape just drifted farther and farther away.

"I always knew," Roy managed to croak out through the sharp pain in his mouth, "I always knew I would lose you one day."

There had been a pause mid-step, and then a brief glance over a shoulder. But the look in those blue eyes was just another closed door.

Then it—he—was gone.

That day, Roy took his first drink of wine. Since then, he was never to be without a flask.

Senses dulled, it was harder to fight, but easier to live. And so he wandered the world with a fog over his head. He chased a fading star as if he were the lesser twin of a binary pair, always falling towards the center of his universe, never hitting.

Sometimes, his star got too far from him and he had to push himself to the breaking point to catch up. Sometimes, its light flickered dangerously low against the dark, struggling against outside forces, converged upon from all directions. Times like this.

Roy figured that if it ever did die out…

Well then, this world would have outlived its usefulness, and he would just have to raze the whole thing to its core.

For now, he had a mountain to climb and a desert to cross.

At greater heights, parts of the terrain had leveled out into pockets of flat land. The mouth of Red Canyon lay next to him, vast and daunting. Its layers of brown and copper shone like rusted metal, as if blood had dried over the earth. Standing at its edge, he could not see the bottom.

The desert was quiet in the morning. The air was light, cool, and the only noise heard was the sound of sand crunching beneath a pair of boots. Temperatures would burn by midday. But Roy did not plan on letting that stop him.

Especially not now, when he finally had the enemy in sight.

It hunched close to the earth, the way dragons slept, camouflaged with the landscape. As a fortified base, it didn't look like much — he had met greater adversaries in the past — but one thing became visible as he approached its massive gates.

Strung up on a line of wire over the entrance, a blood-soaked banner fluttered halfheartedly in the wind. Someone's trophy, a blue cape, torn.

**x x x**

Blood writhed on his tongue.

Marth coughed it out when he caught another boot to the stomach. He felt the impact all the way up his throat and to the back of his mouth. There was a taste to it, leaving his lips slick and warm.

It didn't matter if he screamed or not. They dug into him regardless. But they wanted to hear him cry out. And he did.

He was beyond resistance. This was not an interrogation. This was a lynching.

Curled on his side on the cold floor, he played dead. He buried his face behind his arms, tried to protect his head, and had no choice but to leave the rest of his body open.

His skin burned. He found that he preferred that feeling, welts that flowered blood, the aftereffect, rather than the initial brunt of each hit, each intensity strong enough to draw nausea from him. It threatened to shatter his bones.

His wrist was already broken. A sharp pain in his chest suggested a fractured sternum. Hurt to breathe. He wondered vaguely if he could still walk. He didn't know if that mattered anymore or not.

He pressed the side of his head against the floor, one eye barely open, the rest of him unable to move.

_Just bury me._

They were on him again. He tried to curl tighter into a ball, but his muscles refused to cooperate. Hours of this same strategy had killed his ability to resist.

_Stop stop stop stop stop stop stop stop stop stop stop stop stop stop stop stop stop stop…!_

He tried to scream again. It came out as something else, a throttled noise from the gut. Didn't sound human. Maybe his jaw was broken too.

Little black stars flickered in and out of his field of vision. Pain, this time, easier to bear. Two things. One, they were tiring—finally. Or two, he was going into shock—finally.

They stopped.

He waited. His breaths came faster than he could control. Bad sign. Bad. Black out approaching if he kept it up.

Beyond his control, this thing, all things. He let go. Everything started to fade.

A sweet hissing sound brought him back. Marth tried to peer through the protective shield of his arms with the one eye that wasn't swollen shut.

In the old days, in his old country, torturers heated iron rods in fire to a glowing white before administering them to prisoners. These days, fire was not needed.

He could feel the heat as one of his tormenters approached. The device in hand had taken less than two seconds to turn from red to white at the tip. The muscles that refused to move before were flinching now as Marth tried to shrink away. A hand clamped down on the back of his neck. He instinctively ducked his head, hid his face behind his arms. Fear clenched his stomach. He could not afford to lose his last good eye. _No._ Tried to vocalize it, but it came out more like, _"Nngh…"_

The hand at his neck didn't try to turn him around. It instead pulled down what was left of his clothing to expose the already much-abused flesh below.

The scream never made it out of his throat. He didn't catch the smell of something burning until later. Heat became like lightening. It stabbed him beneath the skin on a thousand needle points. At the surface, it blossomed like fire. Pain enough to go beyond tears, or bringing bile to his mouth, enough to make his mind start to recede from his body.

"_Nngh…"_

The convulsions took minutes to subside. Spasms tore through him. In the aftermath, he was cold, trembling against the floor. He couldn't help it, couldn't stop it.

"_Ugh…"_

His mind spun. His lips were wet. But he felt no pain right then. It was okay. Okay.

Okay to die. Now.

Right?

A soft hum. That thing with the glowing white light had recharged.

Laughter. "Should I put it in his eye?" It was a deep voice, musing.

Another voice answered. "Put it in his mouth."

A pause. "Later. I got a better idea."

Something, probably the blade of a knife, worked its way under Marth's belt. He felt a short, strong tug. It had cut through. Then a hand was pulling at his trousers.

He didn't fight. He closed his eye. Tried to breathe. He needed a moment, just a moment. Had to conserve what was left of his energy. Had to, because they weren't going to just stand by and watch while he chewed off his own tongue and swallowed it. He needed all of his failing strength for one last maneuver, to smash his head hard enough on the concrete floor to kill himself.

_Die._

_Otherwise…_

_No._

_No other options._

Someone laughed.

Tears were warm on Marth's face.

_Goodbye, Roy._

Suddenly, a door slammed open, crashing loudly, as if it had been knocked off its hinges.

The laughter was cut short.

Then the metal heating rod clanked onto the floor, next to Marth's head. He dared to peer upward.

His primary tormenter was being strangled.

The others rushed to help. But with an inhuman strength, the interloper spun and hurled their comrade at them. All three were thrown back against the wall. They fell, tumbled over each other.

Marth made a grab for the dropped weapon.

The foot that stepped onto his hand did so with measured force, not to hurt him, only to stop him.

A voice _tsked _in reprimand.

"Behave yourself, and you and I will get along just fine." The speaker's blue-skinned face was almost human. Almost, but not. He spoke at a distorted pitch. "I've been looking for one like you for a long time."

His lips twisted with sadistic mirth.

"As they used to say, little Anri, in my grandmother's day, _'out of the frying pan, and into the gas chamber...'"_

* * *

Chapter notes: Zoda's look is taken primarily from F-Zero GX, the game. Here he's missing that glass jar over his head, but it might show up later. His appearance changes between the game and the F-Zero anime, in which the latter altered his skin color and had the tube to the medical device on his back connecting to the top of his head without a jar. I put it in the back of his neck because I had forgotten that detail about his character design when I wrote the previous chapter. Visually, a tube protuding from someone's skull is much creepier though.


	5. battery 4

A/N: Third revision. Fixed minor grammatical, stylistic problems. Comments/criticism appreciated.

**Warning: generic ridiculous fight scenes.**

Disclaimer: The following contains characters and concepts that are NOT the property of the author. They are the intellectual property of Nintendo, HAL Laboratories and their associates. This work of fanfiction is NOT endorsed by the original creators and is NOT in any way meant to insult the original work. The author has received NO monetary benefit from this piece of shit.

* * *

(4)

They fought with weapons that were not truly archaic.

Roy dodged sabers and batons. A strong rush of heat barely missed him as he twisted out of the way. It came with the unmistakable pink glow of a plasma sword. The wielder had overextended the attack, and before he could turn around, Roy's blade cut him down from behind.

This was, perhaps, the last place in the world where steel alone could kill like it used to.

Another of Roy's opponents also fell to that sentiment, a half-drawn stun-gun slipping from loose fingers.

The swordsman swung to the right, caught a baton in midair. His blade severed it in half, but the tip extended outward, twice as long as it had been, and kept its trajectory. It missed Roy's ear by a near margin, landed in someone else's thigh instead. The man screamed as he crumpled. One less problem to worry about.

He had to side-step another attack, a chain with bright blue orbs embedded in its links, whipping down from overhead. It struck the ground where he had been standing and detonated a charge that threw up a curtain of sand and heat, launching everyone near it.

Roy was thrown with the rest. Hot needles of sand scratched his face. He flipped over and over and landed in a crouch, one foot planting down on a stump of charred flesh. Someone else's, not his own, though he had to look to make sure everything of his was still attached.

Two of them were practically on him the moment he recovered. This was okay. Closer was better. His sword bit into their armored vests in a single arc. The force of the swing stopped them midstride and painted the sand in dark red streaks. They split like bags of skin and entrails. Roy let the momentum carry him forward at an angle. He swayed noticeably now.

The wine was in full effect.

The next one that charged him landed a glancing blow with a staff that was probably meant for his head. It slammed down onto his right shoulder instead, hard enough to make him stumble. His armor clanked with the impact, deflected some of the force. He felt the clash, but the pain was dull, was not important. He contorted his body to let the weapon roughly skin past, sank lower in stance, got his feet solid against the ground once more. The staff flew up to launch another powered strike. Roy lunged forward and thrust the sword into his attacker's torso. The jolt felt like running into a stone wall, but his blade sank in a bit before it stopped. The staff slipped to the ground, and Roy planted a kick against the man's chest to withdraw his weapon. There was blood only at the tip. The man went down onto his knees, and Roy kicked him in the side of the head out of frustration.

Their damn armor kept absorbing most of the damage.

He spun around, sank his blade into something else soft, pulled back, plunged it in again, and kicked the sagging body away. Something warm hit his fingers. It clung to his neck as well.

A voice cut through the melee, a scream, fierce and animal-like. It came from behind him, and Roy turned to meet it. But he wasn't fast enough.

A solid force slammed into him, made him remember stories of men who fought bulls and lost. He flew away, skinning arms and legs against razor sharp sand as he tumbled. He skidded until he managed to control the spin and find his footing. Crouched, one hand planted down, the other still griping his sword, both arms stinging, he looked up.

Blood Falcon rushed him like a missile, scraping the ground with a sliding kick that could break legs and crush feet. No time to think, Roy dived to the right, rolled away.

Falcon slid to an abrupt stop and turned to face Roy again. He charged.

The swordsman swung his blade wildly and missed. Falcon's uppercut caught him in the chest first, under the chin second, and carried him into the air. Head spinning, Roy sought to recover, only to realize there was nothing but air beneath him.

Red Canyon waited to catch him. It was magnificent, and far more vast than what he had first seen.

**x x x**

_Well that ended fast._

Falcon approached the edge of the canyon slowly, step by measured step, grinding sand under his soles. He looked over the brink.

Nothing. Just empty air. The canyon returned nothing once claimed.

_Tough break, kid._

He turned away. He didn't let himself shake his head.

Something though tugged at his senses. A brush of air. The wind at his back. In the distance, he could see the flags that bore Goroh's colors, limp and motionless at their posts.

He looked behind him. Too slow.

The battle cry rattled out from the gut, deep and feral. The swordsman flew up at him from the depths, blade cutting a line from Falcon's gut up to his chest in an uppercut motion. Red cloak and steel shot past him on an ascent path. His body shield crackled at the impact. His skin burned. Falcon went airborne in a rush of flame.

**x x x**

This time, Roy was the one that landed on his feet.

The swordsman took a labored breath.

"Guess no one told you about that. We don't fall the first time."

**x x x**

That had not been too impressive of a display. But what could you expect from a clone?

Never send a human to do a professional's job.

Pico smoothly caught the target in his cross-hairs. Someone had to end this game. It might as well be someone halfway competent. He rested his finger on the trigger.

The red-hair was on the move, but in a moment he would fall right in place…

_Now._

The boy turned just then. Turned and looked up at Pico. Their eyes locked.

The sniper froze.

The swordsman dove for cover behind crates and machinery.

Eyes narrowed, Pico curled his tongue in thought. Now this…this was interesting.

Something was at work here. Cybernetics or bioengineering. Something. Because human eyes could not possibly be that good.

Pico searched with the scope. _Where are you, maggot? I don't think you can flyyyyyyyyyyyy…_

A short burst of energy punched a hole in the wall next to Pico's head. He ducked instinctively. The alien glanced over his shoulder and hissed. Great, the berserker with the sword now had his hands on one of their weapons. Goroh preferred short to medium-range power rifles and supplied them to his men. They were cheap and not really accurate, offering moderate knock-back if fired in rapid bursts.

But those things, Pico realized, could be charged up to fire stronger—

He lunged to the side as one of those super-charged blasts hit the edge of the balcony. Pico leapt for the neighboring platform a moment before the previous one exploded in a ball of light. His chest smacked hard against its metal grating, the air hot around him. The blast impact bit into his body armor, taking the damage up to twenty-six percent.

He had made a mistake in exposing himself on the outer balcony.

Pico dashed for the safety of the corridor.

By the time he had repositioned himself at a window, his target was gone.

The back of his head smarted from the explosion. The skin there had been singed. He hissed in anger.

Burns to the skull always gave Pico the worst migraines.

He pressed his tongue against the roof of his mouth and snaked it past his lips. The air tasted like electricity.

_Sssssssssssssssssssss...you will pay, you little meal-flesh grub puppet…_

**x x x**

He was being carried. He didn't know where to. Lights passed by overhead without triggering recognition. There was a pattern to it, but someone's chin obscured his view.

Darkness meant safety somehow. He didn't understand it, only felt it. Some part of his battered heart believed that. So when that part ran and hid in the shadows of his mind, he followed.

But then he felt the straps, stark cold as they tightened around his wrists.

Marth's good eye flew open.

Brightness. Overpowering. He turned away.

Eventually the light backed off a bit. He only knew that he was lying down, and that the ceiling was black.

A grey shadow bent over him, silent and unmoving for a moment. It watched him breathe. And then chilled fingers were working their way under his torn clothes, over bruised and tender skin.

Marth flinched, trying to draw back, but there was nowhere to go. He struggled weakly against the restraints and found he could barely move. Someone, or something, cried out softly at this realization. That broken voice didn't sound like his own, but who else could it have belonged to?

"Look at this!" It came from the shadow overhead, a hiss of reproach. "What were they doing? They got you all dirty."

Something cool clamped down over his damaged eye. The skin tightened, but there was no pain.

In the background, a machine hummed. Marth turned but couldn't see anything. Something blurry moved next to him, too close to his face to make out. As the length of it extended toward his neck, it showed itself as a long needle, aimed and angled to fit under his collar bone. He cringed when the cold metal pressed against his skin. It moved in at an agonizing pace until his skin finally broke. Penetration was slow. A strangled, barely audible scream worked its way out of his throat. His vision exploded to pure whiteness

After a moment, the pain faded.

After another moment, nothing hurt.

He kept his eyes closed.

In the stillness, air brushed against his skin. It came in rhythmic patterns, tickling down the surface of his throat.

Breathing. There was someone's breath on him.

Marth hesitantly cracked open one eye.

The blue-faced shadow hovered close. Black eyes empty, motionless.

_Are you hypnotizing me, or am I..._

He couldn't stop the sudden rise of fear as those cold fingers reached for his face.

The voice scraped his ears. "You…are…"

The sentence ended with a strangled sound.

**x x x  
**

Roy tightened the arm he had around Zoda's neck, trying to hold the bastard down. But Zoda was taller, and when he surged to his feet, Roy got carried along.

The swordsman made a fist with his left hand and slammed it into the side of Zoda's face. He pummeled until he drew blood. His victim wrestled and struggled to breathe.

Suddenly, Zoda surged backwards hard enough to slam Roy into the counter behind him.

The metal edge struck the swordsman across his lower back. He screamed and lost his hold, falling back against surgical equipment and assorted machine parts.

Choking, Zoda scrambled to grab the nearest weapon. When he spun around afterwards, he faced Roy with a laser scalpel in hand. A grinned stretched his gaunt face. The muscles there contorted into something else. The transformation was seamless, and Roy wondered how he could have mistaken this thing for a human being.

The madman's cackle pierced deeper than any needle.

"Oh you are going to regret the day they cut your half-living fetus from your mother's carrion womb you little-_!"_

Roy ducked out of the way as Zoda dove for him and severed the counter in half.

They were in too tight a space for Roy to draw his sword. Instead, he aimed a kick at the back of Zoda's knees, sweeping his legs out from under him. Zoda crumbled. The weapon was lost when it struck the floor and tumbled away.

In a second, Roy was on him, but Zoda twisted around, hands reaching for the cutting tool. Roy grabbed the back of Zoda's head and smashed his face against the floor. _Again and again and again and again! _

_One!_ more time, into the floor, and then the swordsman made a lunge for the weapon himself. But as soon as his fingers wrapped around it, Roy felt a sharp pain in his arm.

Zoda's teeth were tearing through his skin.

Roy screamed but held on. Blood welled up against a blue mouth. Empty pupils flashed dangerously, and breaths came in ragged pulses.

_Demon,_ Roy thought, just as his own eyes fixated on the vein bulging out of Zoda's exposed neck.

Roy bit him, and bit him hard. Between his teeth, the muscle was stiff, corded. Zoda made a scuffling noise, like a scavenging animal, and burrowed his teeth deeper into Roy's arm. In response, Roy tightened his own jaw. Fluid seeped into his mouth. The taste was bitter but not the same as blood.

The pain intensified. Then it passed on into numbness. Black spots started to cloud Roy's vision.

And then, without warning, Zoda released him.

There was a meek gasp, followed by a sudden jerk that tore them both apart.

The blue man—thing, whatever—went stiff, convulsing on the floor. His arms fumbled around in violent spasms. He made no other noises except for shallow gasping and rapid sputters.

It was then that Roy noticed the fingers wrapped around the black cord extending from the box on Zoda's back—the gaping hole where it was supposed to fit into his neck, rather than hang loose and drip fluid onto the floor—Marth's hand on the cord—Marth on the floor, half on top of Zoda, gripping the cord as if he knew nothing else.

Roy turned and spat out Zoda's blood. The taste lingered with a sting. He crawled over the twitching body and shoved it aside. Incoherent noises came from it. Roy didn't care.

"Marth…"

He had finally let go of the cord. One of his eyes was bandaged. The other was closed.

A patch of medicinal membrane covered a spot on his back just below the neck. Its translucent film showed skin that had been burned through to the bone.

Roy turned him onto his back, one arm cradling Marth's head, careful to keep the wound on his back above the floor. Among the fresh wounds, there were older ones, partially healed. They had done this more than once. Hurt him and healed him, just to hurt him again.

Roy reached for the small pouch at his waist where he had stashed a few first aid supplies from the kit that was given to him. He tore open a patch and pressed it to the open hole at Marth's collar bone, where it stuck.

At the touch, Marth opened one eye.

Roy exhaled. "Can you walk?"

"Ah…" He swallowed. "I don't…"

Roy hauled him onto his feet and set him down on the edge of the surgical table. One of the straps had been torn through. A needle jutted out of a machine at the head of the table, stained red.

"Hey." When he got no response, Roy brought a hand to the side of Marth's face and gripped him tightly. "We're walking out of here."

"Kill me if we don't make it."

"Stupid."

"Promise." It came out as a whisper.

"Shut up."

Roy drew one of Marth's arms across his shoulders and stood up. Together, they made it as far as the hallway just outside the room before the weaker one faltered. Marth collapsed onto his knees.

"Dammit. Don't tell me you want to die here," Roy growled.

Marth tried to catch his breath. Roy glanced urgently down both sides of the corridor before dropping down next to his friend. He got an arm around Marth.

_Not like this. He won't make it._

"Get on my back. I'm going to carry you."

Marth managed to do that, arms hugging Roy's shoulders.

Hunched over, Roy made his way, peering around corners, stepping over fallen bodies and pools of blood.

At some point, Marth noticed the disturbing amount of red coating the walls.

"You can be a demon when you want to be," he murmured in Roy's ear.

"Takes one to beat one, I guess. Or a hundred."

"My demon."

"Sure."


	6. battery 5

A/N: Update delayed due to Brawl's Japanese release (and the subsequent flood of information submerging the Internet). Apologies are in order.

Disclaimer: The following contains characters and concepts that are NOT the property of the author. They are the intellectual property of Nintendo, HAL Laboratories and their associates. This work of fanfiction is NOT endorsed by the original creators and is NOT in any way meant to insult the original work. The author has received NO monetary benefit from this piece of shit.

* * *

(5)

Marth's weight kept him grounded. Roy stomped a blind path through stone corridors, navigating the maze of dark by instinct, a washed-out visual, and a loose sense of memory. He smelled blood. His body ached. His steps wavered. But he was okay.

Everything was fine. Even if the world sometimes tilted, there was a warmth against his back, solid and real and reassuring. Soft breath glided on his neck. He couldn't hear it over his pounding footfalls, so he tuned in to the feel of it. Held onto that feeling, pulse for pulse, as he ran.

A left turn at a T-section led to a pair of closed metal doors. At some point, the corridor had transitioned from stone to steel. The doors were sealed along a diagonal line. No lock, no keypad.

Roy turned and sprinted the other way. Problem. He had no clue anymore which way was the right direction.

He dashed into the first open doorway, trying to find his return path.

He came to a dead halt. One of Goroh's men spun around, startled, dropping pots and pans all over the floor.

They both stared at each other dumbly for a second. Finally the other man drew a cleaver from his belt with nervous hands.

Knives surrounded them on the walls, hanging on racks next to plates, bowls and large pots.

The swordsman straightened up a bit. He turned his head slightly, tried to nudge Marth while keeping his eyes on the man in front of him. They were in trouble.

But the kitchen worker didn't make a move. He met Roy's gaze, eyes wide, terrified.

He was an older man, short and sinewy, skin lined with age, darkened by the sun. His thinning black hair was close-cropped. He wore an apron instead of an armored vest. The hand that held the knife did so with an experienced grip. But right now, that hand was shaking. He made no effort to attack.

Roy shifted his stance, edging back slightly. Played it non-offensive as best as he could.

The silence was broken by a weak gasp. Roy felt it glance the skin of his neck.

For the first time, the man with the cleaver focused his eyes on the face half-hidden behind Roy's shoulder.

The hand on the knife went down. He stood with his arms at his sides.

Roy took another step back, carefully. Marth's breaths came in short flutters.

Then the man sheathed his weapon in a broad leather pouch at his waist. His stare was perfectly blank when he raised his head to face Roy. Slowly, he lifted his empty hand, pointing to his right.

Roy risked a moment to glance in that direction. There was a heavy steel door to the side of the kitchen.

He looked again to the face of the kitchen worker. The man held himself completely still, stone-faced, arm outstretched.

_What sort of an idiot--?_

Heavy steps came from the hall, accompanied by urgent voices.

_No time._

"Go," Marth whispered.

Roy gritted his teeth.

_GO!_

**x x x**

Marth had known that they would never be friends. Roy spoke with growls and grunts and one-sided grins. He wore his sword too casually. He took his hits too proudly. And he left his hair uncombed. He was the champion of a rival school, and one year, he was brought to the tournament by his teacher so that he might defeat the highest ranked student under Marth's master.

That was to be Marth.

In battle, they would prove to be too much the same, yet too far apart to meet in the middle.

That year, Marth almost lost his title to the relentless, world-renowned kick boxer, Captain Falcon. A single miss during an attack combo had left Marth open on a fall. From there, the match would turn in Falcon's favor.

The Captain had exploited a weakness. Throughout the battle, he kept the distances between them short, where Marth's sword was less effective. He had learned to reverse all of the swordsman's throws and to counter all his counters. He had lost a great deal of the brashness that had cost him the title last year.

And then, Marth had mistimed an aerial strike. His blade would hit only empty space as the Captain managed to evade with ease. Next, he was falling, Falcon following close behind, from the highest platform to the lowest level of the fighting stage. The powerfully-built boxer pummeled the slighter swordsman with a flurry of fists and knees until they both crashed landed onto the floor.

From there, Marth could not regain his momentum. He could barely catch his breath.

The arena rolled and sailed past him as he was grabbed and thrown over the edge. Only last-minute instinct made him reach for the ledge with his free hand. His fingers secured it, but just barely. His muscles were losing tension. The world around him seemed to spin. He looked up from the daze, through the sharp pain pounding in his skull, and found Falcon looming overhead, ready to put an end to it.

The match was over.

But then, from some height above both fighters, there came the sound of shattering glass. The alarm went off as a blaring siren.

Falcon, along with the crowd of spectators, turned to look.

Marth threw his head back but could only see a shadow dropping toward the stage, a silhouette against the spotlights.

_"New Challenger!"_ the announcer screamed.

The intruder had broken through two layers of safety glass at an observation booth and now was aimed directly for Falcon, falling fast. His red cape trailed behind him. Falcon dodged just in time to avoid being stomped on but immediately fell back to an onslaught of steel. Unlike the Captain's intended opponent, close distances did not deter this challenger. The aggressive arcs of his sword pressed Falcon further and further back toward the platform's edge. The final strike released a wave of flames that engulfed the boxer and swept him out of the ring, beyond recovery.

_"Game! Victory to the challenger by ring out!"_

The new swordsman pumped an energetic fist into the air, his excitement unrestrained. Spectators in the audience surged to their feet. The stadium was packed for the title match, and the winner indulged them by sinking into a pose. Immersed in their screams and applause, he forgot to watch his back.

Marth, unable to swallow his pride, hauled himself back onto the platform, unsteadily trying to shake the clouds from his eyes. He found his balance, and then he rushed in, sword ready, and dealt the new contender a cheap shot across the back.

That got the interloper's attention.

The challenger stumbled, and then he spun around in a defensive crouch, blade drawn. His eyes met Marth's for the first time, an intensity barely contained.

_So this,_ went Marth's thoughts, _was to be the victor._ This teenage boy with unruly red hair and an all-too-casual stance, whose manner did not suit the gold armor he wore. His stately, though unadorned, uniform was better suited to a military commander of rank, not a juvenile who went into battle with his desires unmasked.

_Cheap!_ decried the clenched jaw, the half-formed sneer.

Marth raised an eyebrow, then raised the tip of his sword. _Cheap? Like intruding in on someone else's fight? Like attacking an opponent already worn down by another?_

Those eyes were a predator's blue. Too much power behind them--power and the promise of violence--for so short a stature and a frame not much heavier than Marth's.

But, dragon eyes or no, Marth had no intention of allowing the match to go to this one. Falcon had been the superior fighter. He deserved better.

Predictably, the challenger rushed him without preamble. Marth turned and leapt for one of the higher platforms. He had taken too much damage to meet a fresh fighter head-on.

The young swordsman followed him, taking an overeager swing with his weapon. Marth dodged by a narrow margin. That blade had a decent range, he realized. Greater than his own.

Marth took flight again, trying for higher ground.

His pursuer was not far behind. An angry cry, a burst of fire, and the boy had catapulted himself off the platform, up to where Marth sought distance. He slashed straight upwards with the sword, barreling toward his opponent from below.

_That's...!_

Marth recognized one of his own signature moves without a doubt, only he had never had to defend against it before. He sprang back, but the tip of the sword caught him anyway. He tumbled, not enough air left in him to vocalize the sudden pain in his gut. The force of the attack carried him over the edge once more. Again, he was at the ledge, clinging with one hand. Nothing below but a long fall and an unseen safety net.

The match needed to end soon. He didn't have the stamina to carry on for longer than this.

He watched for the blade. When it cut down toward him, he kicked off the wall and swung himself back onto the stage, rolling behind his opponent. His hand grabbed a fistful of the boy's cape, as the red-haired swordsman was still in the middle of the forward lunge, and threw the other fighter as far off the ledge as he could.

The young challenger fell until he hit the opposite wall of the arena, skidding along its surface. He abruptly kicked off the wall and flew back at Marth, eyes angry, blade already swinging.

Marth's sword countered his before that strike ever landed--a quick slash to an exposed midsection, like a flick of the wrist--and sent the new contender plummeting back down.

The announcer called _"Game!" _a second time. The audience roared.

Marth sheathed his sword.

A beast by blood or training, it didn't matter. This weapon was meant to slay dragons.

**x x x**

Roy watched the man play with his tools. He seemed inexplicably comfortable now, though Roy still kept a hand near the hilt of his sword.

The man had been useful for certain pieces of information, at least. Fires were risky even if Roy could summon them at will. Goroh's thugs were bound to have regrouped by now. They would not, however, know which tunnel had been the escape route. Several of their machines were down for repairs at the moment, including a flyer. They would have to search on foot and on land crawlers, vehicles which were well designed for steep, rocky surfaces but not for night operations. Their equipment also did not allow them to actually see through any part of the mountain.

_Know your terrain. Use it._

Temperatures had dropped rapidly with the sun. Goroh's defector cook placed a spherical, pocket-sized heater between them on the ground. Its faint light glowed orange.

Roy hadn't wanted to stop. But even he admitted that his legs were straining just to walk. When his newly acquired--not yet fully trusted--ally offered to carry Marth, Roy had merely ignored him.

The door from the kitchen had led to a rock-faced tunnel. Roy kept following because he had no other choice. The darkness made it impossible to measure the closeness of the walls, but it felt stifling. Something made the air heavy. So Roy had concentrated on walking, on Marth's heartbeat, on listening for footsteps that did not belong to just two. The winding path, lit by the other man's dim flashlight, opened into a broad chamber buried somewhere deep inside the mountain. They took the only available path on a steel walkway suspended above the ground. Below them, metal giants hummed, attached to each other by large pipes that disappeared underground. Their forms were made visible by orange lamps on the walls. Red and white lights flickered from the surfaces of each machine. The smell was strongest here, of oils, grease and fire.

The corridor exiting that chamber eventually emptied them out into the desert, somewhere on the rocky surface of the mountain.

Roy had only agreed to rest when he realized he couldn't climb with Marth on his back.

"My name is Chen."

Roy looked up. The man did not smile, did not even seem nervous.

Roy considered him in silence before speaking. "Why are you helping us?" He thought it a reasonable question.

It took a moment for a vague smile to form on Chen's face. Roy waited for a response, for the inevitable double-cross.

Next to him, Marth stirred. He had slept the entire way here.

Roy placed a hand on his friend's shoulder, found it cold, and pulled off the cape he had been wearing ever since he had cut it down from Goroh's front gates. He draped it over Marth even though he didn't want to. It was stiff with blood, torn by the wind. Beneath it, Marth huddled, curled on his side under another cloak, which had fared better. Even ripped at places and spotted with blood--at least it was the enemies' blood.

But one layer was not enough to fend off the desert at night. So Roy tugged the red fabric, tucking it under Marth's chin. He pulled the blue over it, making sure the second layer didn't actually touch Marth's skin.

His face was pale, even under the orange glow of the heater. Roy let the back of his fingers linger there. The skin felt soft and cold.

Across from him, Chen shifted position. Roy eyed him warily, but the man only lay down on his side, facing the heater, and closed his eyes.

Marth pressed up slightly against Roy's hand.

Under better circumstances, Roy would have made a joke to get his attention. Roy's in-battle taunts had always involved whistles and catcalls, cries of _"Ey, Princess Tiara!"_ and questions of Marth's actual gender, the nobility-bred limpness in his wrist. _("Your lord likes you as a ladyboy, huh?")_ Off the field, he pestered Marth over taking up that single-handed sword style just so he had one hand free to flick his ridiculously long bangs out of his eyes, and did he realize how annoying it was to fight a guy who kept doing that?

He couldn't, of course, say anything like that right now, not even to lighten the mood. Couldn't because the last time he was sitting like this, watching Marth shiver in his sleep beneath two cloaks, the sun had been about to rise, and Roy had been working up the balls to leave. The entire night had been wasted on that effort, and in the end he still didn't have it in him, not until the threat of dawn finally forced his hand.

Sunrise called him coward all the way from the grassy field to the main road and on every morning thereafter.

Where that road--that one particular road--had led, he couldn't recall.

Until yesterday, he had forgotten about that night out on the open field, half-hidden by soft and rough grass.

Until yesterday, the days of the year were not separate things to him. Time ran together without distinction. The sun rose and fell to an irregular pulse, a non-pattern, and took away any connection between the hours.

Until yesterday, Marth had been nothing but a sensation that overtook him in the final moments before a drug-induced sleep--small bones and fine lines and warm steel and lethal-delicate skin. A shape his fingers knew. A curve on one side on the outline of face. And nothing else.

Until yesterday, he was not certain if that town on the horizon would be his first, or if there had been others.

Marth whimpered brokenly in his sleep. Roy stroked his cheek to calm him, but he flinched away.

Reluctantly, Roy withdrew his hand. He realized what was wrong.

He had just a while ago been able to slap med-patches over the worst of his wounds. The pain in his shoulder occasionally radiated down his arm, but there was nothing to do at the moment. He would administer another painkiller if necessary. That was his sword arm, and he needed it.

His injuries were not severe beyond that, but the smell of blood had not come clean. It had followed him all day. It clung to his hands.

Now was the time to wish for rain, if only it wouldn't freeze them all to death.

Roy pulled the wine gourd from his belt. He only needed a sip. Just to stop the tremor in his right hand. He needed that hand. There wasn't much left, but as long as he made it back into town, he would be all right. It no longer made him dizzy or tired. It only slowed things down and killed his abhorrence to pain. He could see the hits before they came, as if all the pieces were laid out on a game board. It didn't matter how many opponents cornered him at any time. He knew the sequence of events before it unfolded, could see it all in his head as vectors and diagrams. He had mastered the chaos theory of fight dynamics. He could counter hits without hesitation, if possible. He could take them without flinching, if necessary.

The wine had never made him completely numb. But it made him stupid enough to think he could bear the pain.

He won more battles this way than he ever had without it.

His only weakness was curled up next to him, breathing gently.

If he hadn't lost that crucial tournament fight--what was it now?--five or six years ago, then they wouldn't be here like this. His master would not have cut him loose. Like a diseased limb. His master had no tolerance for weakness or failure. The world devoured the weak, she had said.

If he had not been cut loose, Marth's master would not have taken him in. He would not have been given a second chance to fail.

He remembered now.

All he wanted to know was who had replaced him. On either side.

"Do you know...what Goroh is mining here?"

Roy snapped his head up. Chen's eyes were closed, head resting on a folded arm. He was not asleep.

"What?" Roy asked sharply, trying to hide that he had almost dozed off.

"Goroh-sir has found something...quite valuable in these mountains. The people in town are always wanting to take it from him."

"Well, I guess that's because it was their land first."

"No. It was no-man's-land. It was until the Federation became law."

Roy listened and waited. Chen kept his eyes closed.

"What has he found?" Roy half-heartedly prodded, voice slack with disinterest.

"You know that sacred substance which is able to power starships for millennia or more?"

"That's a rumor."

"No. Is no rumor. The madman--Zoda is his name--he charges his battery here."

Roy stayed quiet, considering.

"You remember," Chen continued, "the machines?"

"Yes."

"They make it there. They pull it from the ground there."

"And Goroh," Roy said, "wants it for himself, or to sell?"

"To sell, of course. But first, need an army to protect. Or else, the Federation will seize it. This place is good. No one knows what is here."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Because they will not let us get away."

"Then why help us?"

Chen did not answer. He feigned sleep.

"Look, you can't come with us unless you tell us."

"I know ways out of this desert."

"So do I," Roy lied.

"There is no reason," the man said. "My son is dead, and that one looks like him. That is all."

Roy glanced briefly at the sleeping form next to him. He was never good at telling a truth from a lie. Why couldn't Marth be awake for this part?

Chen lay on his right side, right arm folded beneath his head. His left hand clutched at something on his chest, making a tight fist. Holding something, maybe, against his chest.

"The people in town are poor," Chen continued. "I used to live there too. But the mines were empty. So I work for Goroh-sir because he can give me money.

"The town will not survive. Because there are no things of use to dig up. No diamonds or good metals or precious rocks."

"Yeah," Roy muttered. "Because no jewels are ever found in land where dragon's blood lies buried."

* * *

Chapter notes: Had a problem with Roy's sword. More specifically, with the position of his scabbard. On his Melee trophies, the scabbard is positioned in a way that seems like his sword would be impossible to draw. It goes horizontally across his lower back, hilt on the right. He is right-handed in the game, and so if he were to draw with his right hand, he would have to do it in a reverse grip, even though he doesn't fight that way. And the blade seems like it would be too long to easily draw in this manner. Even if he were left-handed, it would still be impractical because it would be too far of a reach.

Roy's scabbard is only pictured on his trophies. It is absent in-game. Marth, on the other hand, has his both during game play and on two of his trophies. He actually sheaths his sword when dodging or shielding. Roy dodges and shields with his sword out. I guess the animators ran into the same problem I did.

In other news, have you all been keeping up with Brawl?


	7. battery 6

A/N: Revised version. C&C please.

Disclaimer: The following contains characters and concepts that are NOT the property of the author. They are the intellectual property of Nintendo, HAL Laboratories and their associates. This work of fanfiction is NOT endorsed by the original creators and is NOT in any way meant to insult the original work. The author has received NO monetary benefit from this piece of shit.

* * *

(6)

Marth woke to a cold morning. The sky was a faded blue, and his body didn't feel like it belonged to him. The desert had brought strange dreams. Somewhere, embedded in its vision, was a message: colossal machines turning over earth and sand, kings crushed beneath tumbling stones, and a place under the heavens where a boy lay twisted on the ground, blood on his face, pink muscle exposed through split skin.

"_I'm sorry, Dad."_

Marth clenched his fingers into a weak fist, expecting the hilt of a sword that wasn't there, the torn skin on his knuckles stinging with the motion. He was tired and his body ached.

But still, he looked up and tried to stare down the dark eyes of Goroh's cook.

The swordsman was at the disadvantage. Stare-downs were difficult with only one eye.

The other man had the advantage of two eyes.

Two eyes and a sharpened cleaver leveled at Marth's throat.

**x x x**

I never saw my mother and father again, you see. I signed a contract with the company. That meant I couldn't leave. My mother cried when I told her what kind of work I had found. I told my father to make sure the money got wired directly into their account. I told them to always double check the payments. I also told them not to worry. I would see them in five years.

But I was young then. And very stupid.

We worked every hour when we weren't sleeping. They fed us workers' rations and gave us drugs to keep us awake and moving. Everyday, we did nothing but work until we were too tired to walk. We had no time to spend idle.

I married a woman here. Do you need to know this? Oh, yes, I will get to what's important, don't worry. We had a child, and there were days I almost fell over as I worked my post. I did this, as did my wife, so we could have our son imprinted. It's so necessary these days. Because things happen. As you well know, Merciful Swordsman.

The mines are a dark place, son. And all those years we dug into the ground, breathing in fatal dust when our masks broke down--we never found anything valuable, just useless rocks and coal. Sometimes animal bones.

And then, one day, the whole thing came down. Right on top of everyone. Killed twelve of us. I think it was supposed to be sixteen, but fate stepped in. You see, I was there too. I remember--you would remember it too, if you were there. The earth shaking, not just underneath you, but all around you and above you. It sounded like a large animal growling, only much louder. I fell down. When it stopped, I could stand up again, and everything was dark. I had no communications with anyone.

You try to find your way out of something with no light. Nothing but rock all around me. I had a feeling I would die.

But after a time, someone came, moving heavy stones out of the way. He had a light. So there were two of us in there. Both of us trapped.

They told us in training that the mines rarely collapsed. They also said that the rescue operations were always successful if it ever happened..

We waited a little bit because there was nothing to do. But my partner noticed that the battery was damaged in the lamp and it would not last long. He wanted to start digging out.

I told him we would never make it, just the two of us. Even if we were close to the entrance, it was still impossible. Better to wait. Or else we'd just bring down the rest of the place with our digging.

'No one's coming,' he said. 'You think the company cares?'

I told him that it didn't matter. We couldn't last without water.

He didn't listen. He told me, 'If you have any meds left, take them.' He used that light and crawled around until he found a pickaxe and a shovel. Batteries were low on those too. But it was all we had.

So we found the markings on the walls pointing towards the way out. And we hooked up with our machines and started digging.

Even in those months when I knew my son was soon to be born, when I worked those long shifts, all that endless digging, when my arm and machine were the same--even in that time, I had never worked as hard as I did when that mine fell. My hands bled; my eyes were stinging behind the mask. I kept injecting myself so I didn't have to stop. We found two others trapped there. They helped us by moving rocks with their bare hands. One had a canteen of water.

The water lasted us a day. The digging took longer than that.

The first signs of light in the dark wall made us hopeful. We were weakening. The battery finally gave out on the light. After that, we just followed the sound of his axe--our leader's--as it crushed stone. We were like a bunch of blind, tired, thirsty bats.

We broke through after…after…

The wall opened with a little hole. There was a sound. Rain hitting the ground. It was raining outside, and outside was within reach. We forced the gap until it broke. We crawled through like worms, losing pieces of skin to the mountain, until we made it to the other side. The first thing I felt was a drop of cold water on my finger. One of us cried. I was too tired. We three collapsed, choking on open wet air. We drank the rain. We couldn't go any further. Only one was still standing.

There was no rescue. He had been right.

He walked on alone and called for help at the station.

And so, we lived, the four of us. Weeks later, my wife's grey hairs started growing out, in spite of being rather young. She had worried so much.

But after the hospital, after we made a small cemetery and buried our friends not far from the place where we spent all our days digging, and after all that, the company told us, 'Back to work.'

So then, you can probably imagine what happened when he--that one who led us out of there, who grabbed us, pushed us and forced us to move when we wanted to lie down and sleep--when he stole some guns and other weapons and a truckload of supplies and announced that he was leaving, heading deeper into the desert, closer to the canyon, that he would find that treasure the company wanted, and not just that, he would beat them to it….

You can imagine that we followed--we, the original three, plus a group of others who were fed up with the company's control of our lives.

My wife stayed behind with my son. I made the same promise to her that I made to my parents years before. 'I'll come back when we find gold.'

Ten years later, our band of men grew in number, and we were at war with the town police. Ten years, and no one yet had found Red Canyon's secret. Ten years, and my son stole a mechanical horse and came out to find me.

Ten years, I followed him, that man. He made me the cook because I wouldn't go down into the mines again. Never again.

And if he--the Samurai Goroh--was here, we would not be having this conversation.

My son--

**x x x**

The man had turned his back to Marth. He brought his sleeve to his face.

Slowly, Marth tried to stand. It hurt to do so, and his head was spinning. The morning air chilled his bare arms. He wrapped one cape around his shoulders and tied it off at the neck, even as his wrist panged intensely at the movement. He draped the other cowl--the blue one--over Roy, who slept on his side against the ground.

Sharp pain stabbed him in the chest as he straightened up. His throat was dry. Marth looked over at Goroh's man and watched the hand that held the cleaver. It was still. At the wrist, a round metal socket stood out, embedded into the skin, the kind that miners used to plug into their equipment.

The voice that came from the sagging figure was hoarse. "Did you make it easy for him?"

"Yes," Marth confessed desperately. He took a breath. He needed it to steady his words. "I assure you, he didn't have time to suffer."

Dawn had colored the sky pink. A childless father pressed his sleeve against his eyes.

"That is why they call you 'Merciful Master,' isn't it?"

Marth looked away. Remembered two boys, inexperienced and eager to prove themselves, cornering him against the canyon wall with guns and knives in hand. (_"We got him!"_) But he had wanted to live, and he had been stronger. That was all that was needed. It had nothing to do with morals or justice. The younger one had screamed in such terror and agony when he saw his friend cut down. The swordsman had not let him scream for long.

"All sons," Marth offered softly, "want to be the pride of their fathers. So, please, be proud of him."

Off to the side, he caught a glimpse of movement--Roy, pretending to sleep, had placed a hand on his sword.

The cleaver made a slick sound when it hit the ground, blade now rooted in the red sand. A muted keening filled the air between them, tightly restrained. The man held something against his chest. His other hand hung limp. Marth couldn't see what Goroh's man kept to his chest, but he could guess.

The swordsman took a step forward. "Come with us," he said, his voice stronger now, "and we will see you into town, or wherever you want to go."

The strangled wail faded into ragged breaths.

They waited in near silence, the three of them.

When Goroh's man finally turned, his face was drained and his eyes were swollen. He held his fist against his sternum, around a silver chain that hung from his neck.

"We will help you take care of your son," Marth said. "And his friend too, if you have him. This next time, perhaps, they won't have to live the way we have."

Slowly, the man shook his head. "His friend was never imprinted. That boy is lost."

"But your son is not."

The father said nothing. Marth stared at him in silence. He didn't know the price of a body these days. It could not have been inexpensive.

"My old master can take care of him," the swordsman persisted. He needed to do this. Needed it more than escape or rain. Otherwise, he would carry Red Canyon with him forever.

They watched each other for another painful moment--old and young, ages apart, enemies, sorrowful and honor-bound. The man opened his mouth to speak.

There came then, a surge of heat through the air, a soft, incredibly soft, crack, close enough that Marth flinched.

The man stood still for some seconds after. It took that long for a dark spot to appear on the front of his shirt. It took another second for it to grow into a red circle, for it to begin to weep.

He pitched forward, face-first into the rust-colored earth. Marth was at his side the moment he hit.

**x x x**

Roy rolled to his feet, armor scraping on rocks, cape tangled around him.

_Sniper!_

He dashed forward, got a hand on Marth's arm, but Marth was holding Chen and he wasn't letting go.

_Move! You--_

Something hot grazed Roy's face, singing the skin there, lighting it like fire.

_Close…!_

Without thinking, Roy grabbed Chen, and he and Marth dragged him. They tumbled gracelessly into a crevice in the ground.

Rising up as much as he dared, Roy peered up. In the distance, it was Green Man again, at a higher point on the mountain, taking aim with his gun. The shots did not emit a visible light. Roy could barely make out the traces in infrared. It was too fast. A flash, and then it'd be on you, just like that.

Roy ducked back down as another blast of heat struck the ground above him. It did not throw up grains of sand, but it left a dark impression and a pit in the earth. Each shot had been barely audible, but he recognized the sound now. Like the crack of lightning, but deadly soft, different from the _thuck!_ of impact that he remembered from before.

Their other guns had fired infused projectiles. This weapon was something else.

The left side of Roy's face stung sharply and burned, but it did not bleed. Next to him, Marth huddled with Chen's head in his lap. The wounded man trembled violently, breaths coming in shallow gasps.

"The medicine…" Marth urged.

Roy looked up. The kit was up there, out in the open.

Impossible. Green Man controlled the high ground.

Chen made an incoherent noise that sounded like a dying engine.

"Roy, please."

He hesitated. His head was throbbing. He blinked, tried to shake it off, but that only made it worse. The rock-faced wall seemed to be moving toward him. He reached down for a familiar burden at his hip and grasped only air.

"Dammit!"

Roy looked up again. He grabbed the ledge above him and sprang up and over into plain sight.

That weapon took longer to charge than a normal gun, so it could not rapid-fire. It stalled for nearly a full second in between shots. Roy could see the flash of the charge-up, had timed it between the sighting and the impact. A stone's throw from impossible.

It came as an infrared flicker. Roy dodged to the side, felt the heat of its passing right next to him. It would take another moment for the sniper to realize he had missed and fire again. Roy had fallen into a roll by then, throwing himself on a diagonal path off the direct line of sight. He rose, sheathed sword clanging against his leg, and twisted to the side again, as another blast almost burned him.

He ducked the next one and made a dive for two things on the ground: the med-kit and the wine.

The first he snatched up, rolling onto his back, and pitched it in the direction he had come from, over and into the ravine where Marth was.

The other he took in hand as he turned over onto his feet. He sprinted for the safety of a tall cluster of rock formations. Something burned at his heel as he ran, but it didn't stop him. He sank behind the boulders. He looked up but had no sight on Green Man.

That meant Greenie couldn't see him either.

He tested his foot. Nothing broken. Boots barely singed. Then he unplugged the wine gourd. His hands were steady.

**x x x**

He used to say we'd find a way out of this place--my son. I knew him as a child, and the next I saw, he was almost a man. He used to say he'd find a way out for all of us--he'd make a place for us, his mother, his friends. He swore to be something better than a cook for a gang of bandits. He swore to make Goroh proud and leave this place and he'd learn to fly those machines, like what Goroh drives in those races that everyone sees all over the galaxy. He swore he would be champion…someday…he will…and his grandparents will see his face on the broadcasts and know him.

And I…never doubted that.

Because he never wanted my…my praise. He had his hero. Goroh…became his father…his better father. I was just a cook.

You look like him. But you must have a father too.

Make sure…he is nothing like us, and I won't blame this on you.

Will he re--mem--

You--you--tell him--a…bout me?

My mem--ry--to--my wife…

Look…

Rain…it's raining…


	8. battery 7

A/N: Ten months and 20,000 words, and you're still in the desert, Roy?

Disclaimer: The following contains characters and concepts that are NOT the property of the author. They are the intellectual property of Nintendo, HAL Laboratories and their associates. This work of fanfiction is NOT endorsed by the original creators and is NOT in any way meant to insult the original work. The author has received NO monetary benefit from this piece of shit.

* * *

(7)

Roy remembered hating most of the fighting stages the Master designed. Especially that one made up of floating balloons-that was the worst. It had been hard enough trying to keep balance on a tree branch while parrying Marth's sword strikes. He didn't need a floor that would move out from under him at the nastiest times.

Marth, on the other hand, could walk on air. His agility carried him weightlessly from branches to clouds to floating platforms shaped like creatures that had no right to exist in nature. His jumps cleared most of Roy's attacks with room enough to breathe-or to flip like an acrobat and retaliate. He landed and pounced with sure-footedness, unshakeable and always quick. Roy found himself constantly on the defensive, backed to the end of every dais they landed on. He had had to scrambled madly for balance, but once stable, the floor beneath his feet would shift sharply to one side, tossing him out into the open air.

His old master had taught him many things. Had taught him pain and endurance. Had made him, on the day of his initiation, stand still, arms braced on wooden rails, while the other students beat him with fists and padded batons until both of his eyes were swollen shut and the floor was spotted with the blood forced up from his throat. Had thrown him out into the snow and left him there to find his way up and down Icicle Mountain. Had stood impassively at the school gates under torchlight when he returned, struggling to walk to her, his fingers stiff and purple and tucked under his arms, face cut by the wind's razors, feet so numb inside his boots they felt like stumps. Clenched between his teeth had been the handle of a flag bearing her symbol, retrieved from the summit. Collapsed at her feet, he had dared to peer up. It would be the first time he saw her look at him without contempt. The other students had cheered for him then. Finally, he was worthy.

His time with the mountain would serve him well. Whenever he missed a step on one of his new master's moving stages, he would plummet, but he never feared the fall. His stomach didn't tighten and surge into his chest. He, instead, looked for places to land, surfaces to rebound off of, ledges to grab and hold onto. He, eventually, learned to master the air-jump technique that had made Marth's teacher a legend.

He could not, however, do all this and fight at the same time.

And the only thing more embarrassing than getting thrown off a massive balloon shaped like a smiling turtle was getting thrown off by a delicate-looking, tiara-wearing boy of noble-bearing-one who rarely let a single strand of hair fall out of place, even during a match-and then falling into the water below and losing his sword somewhere in the bay. The first thing she-his old master-had ever trained him to do was to hold onto his weapon. To hold it while striking, while blocking, while grappling, while shielding, while running, while jumping, while rolling, while falling, while drowning, while winning, while losing. In battles, she had never permitted him to wear a scabbard. If he ever let go of his sword while his arm was still attached to his body, she had said, he would no longer be her fighter.

So the shame must have been deeply etched into his face that day as he dove repeatedly into the water because as he resurfaced for perhaps the tenth time empty-handed, Marth had shed his armor, boots, cape and tiara and stepped into the shallow bay. The afternoon wore on as they worked, and then, Marth came to the surface once more, nearly out of breath. Roy tossed a suspension line over to him, and as the other fighter reached for it, the hilt of Roy's sword became visible in his right hand. But Marth's fingers slipped on the line, and he went under, and for a moment, Roy only knew blind panic. His gut clenched. He dove for the spot where Marth had disappeared, but before he had gone very far, the other fighter suddenly reappeared. A green mound pushed its way to the surface from underneath Marth. It was a shell, and the swordsman was perched on top of it, knees splayed out across its curved surface. The mammoth-sized turtle drifted to the dock with all the urgency of a falling leaf. There, it let off its passenger. Roy couldn't stop staring for nearly half a minute. He finally shut his mouth and pulled himself up from the water. Marth, bare from the waist up, pants clinging to his legs like a second skin, offered the sword with both hands. Roy took it without a word.

His calloused palm fit over the worn wrappings at the handle. Years spent cultivating that single grip had assured that these two parts knew each other.

Next to him, Marth crouched down to pet the turtle on its head. The enormous animal turned its eyes to Roy. It looked like it wanted to laugh.

Marth's backside was pale smoothness in the afternoon sun. Small tight muscles stretched beneath unmarred skin. His waist was thin; his shoulders were more sloped than broad (without the armor, it was easy to see). Those fashionably long (stupidly and impractically long) blue bangs had been pushed to the side, out of his eyes, and were now clinging to his forehead.

Briefly, a wary gaze flickered in Roy's direction, though the head did not turn, and Roy wondered if he had been caught staring. He looked to the ocean.

"There are things," Marth said, "that a fighter has to bear in mind before going into battle." He and the turtle considered each other calmly, even as Marth directed his words to Roy. "Can you name them?"

Roy shrugged. His training partner liked to talk long about completely useless topics. But the answers came the moment he stopped thinking about the question, so he voiced them anyway.

"My opponent.

"My weapon.

"Myself."

A careful smile broke the porcelain stillness of Marth's face. He and the turtle shared an inside joke. Then the massive amphibian ducked its head and disappeared underwater. The green shell followed, leaving nothing but ripples behind.

"You are missing some things," Marth said, eyes on the water. "One is most crucial." He glanced at Roy but still did not turn to fully face him. "I suppose when you figure it out, you'll finally stop losing."

Roy couldn't keep in a sneer. _Bastard._

Took him months to finally get it. Took him even longer to realize that those curious glances from half-shuttered blue eyes were aimed less for him than they were for the scars that marked up his torso. Marth had left another question unasked, but not necessarily because he didn't want to know. They weren't friends just yet.

Years later, they still weren't friends. But as Roy slinked across the rough face of another mountain, keeping low so that some obstruction always stood between him and the sniper, he craned his neck in all directions, blinking raindrops out of his eyes, and kept looking for that turtle.

Eventually, he found it: a gap in the terrain, a crevice that rose as a vertical duct to a height on level with the gunman's current position. The only problem was that it was a long way to go against gravity.

But then, his old master had taught him a technique for that too.

**x x x**

"You."

Something cold and sharp pricked the back of Marth's neck. He held himself completely still, even as the nerves along his spine sparked with alarm. He shivered beneath the soft, sudden rain.

Footsteps crunching on gravel brought two men into his view as they circled around from behind him. The stiff metallic point stayed where it was, pressing against the skin of his neck, a step away from drawing blood.

One of the men crouched down in front of Marth, where Goroh's cook lay still. He lifted the apron off of the fallen man's face.

"Ey, it's him."

The components of Roy's medical pouch lay scattered around. Marth had been trained in the basics of wound care, but he wasn't a healer.

He had tried.

The second man looked down at the swordsman, his expression hard. Without a word, his leg came swinging. Marth turned away and blocked it with a raised arm. He might as well have caught a grenade. Pain shot through his wrist; the impact slammed deep into his skull and threw him to the ground.

He lay still, his head throbbing, the world spinning, and played dead against the wet sand. He knew their faces. They were the same three from the dark room with the concrete floor and the sharp needles and hard knuckles and electric prongs and razor wire and sticks that burned like white-hot suns. His skin trembled at the memory.

A hand grabbed the back of his shirt and dragged him along the ground. Then it released him, and another blow came to the side. It felt as though his skin would rupture. He grit his teeth. He could bear this. He could.

"Get up."

He pressed both hands against the earth, got his knees under him. Something scraped his belly. It was not a stone. He placed a hand on it and realized what it was. Somehow, it had been kicked into the ravine with them.

Marth looked up. He felt what could only have been the blade of a sword press against his spine. It traced a line up and across his shoulder blade, snagging the threads of his shirt. Its tip came close and prodded him under the jaw, bringing the blade wielder to the right side of him.

The man who had dealt the blows stood in front of Marth, watching his struggles with a grim satisfaction.

"Chen came to avenge his son," he said. "We'll do it now in his place."

"Thought they wanted him alive?" spoke up the third, the one closest to the body.

"Zoda doesn't give orders around here."

"Yeah, but until the boss gets back-"

The man with the sword turned his head to shout at his comrade. "Chen was like your brother!"

Marth deflected the blade with a gloved forearm. He surged to his feet.

His enemy took a moment too long to react. Chen's cleaver sliced into the blade wielder's hand from the top, forcing him to drop his weapon with a surprised cry. The second strike came just as quickly as Marth slashed into the man's chest.

The other man nearest to Marth lunged forward and tried to tackle him. Marth staggered-the knife hand was caught, but the other arm was free-and he drove an elbow into the man's face. A second strike drew blood; the third broke the man's nose with a wet crack. Marth struggled out of the hold and kicked his assailant off of him.

The third man rushed him with a baton. Marth flung the cleaver. It glanced off the side of the target's head with the solid smack of either the handle or the dull edge of the blade. The third man dropped.

Behind him, he heard scuffling as the blade wielder managed to get back to his feet, weapon in hand. But he held it with his left, and he was clumsy. Marth dodged the brunt of the first swing, though the tip grazed him, cutting a shallow wound in his chest, so fast he barely felt the nip. The blade had been closer than he'd thought.

Beneath the combatants' feet, sand and dirt became mud with the rain. Their steps were less and less steady as the earth grabbed at their soles, one pair in sturdy boots, the other bare except for cloth wrappings.

The next strike came from overhead but missed Marth completely. The swordsman whirled around to the attacker's left side, slipping slightly, but managed to grab the man's wrist and twist it. There was a sharp cry of pain, and the fingers that had been wrapped around the hilt of the sword now opened up. Marth deftly snatched the blade away.

His grip felt strange and uncoordinated, but he shuffled back and lifted the tip of the weapon. He aimed it at the man's throat and held it still.

His opponent took a step back.

Marth took one forward. And then another.

Goroh's man backed up again and again until he stumbled. He had stepped on Chen's arm.

Marth stopped, and for a moment neither moved. The hand on the sword wavered.

In the fighter's memory, there was a boy choking on blood that came in thick dark currents. His chest had trembled in spasms, and then he had died, eyes open, staring into the sky.

In Marth's grip, the sword was heavy and unbalanced. Unlike his own blade, this one was not a weapon. It was a modified tool, originally meant to cut metal rather than flesh and bone.

In his one hand, it was too much weight, straining his wrist. He secured it with both hands. Tremors worked up the lengths of his arms. Gravity tugged at his wrist, entreating him to lay down his burden.

But then he remembered. Kicked and beaten in the dark. Blood in his mouth and fire on his skin. The vomit-inducing pain that pierced through muscle and bone. A line of wire tightening around his finger. The blackouts. The shocks back into wakefulness and relentless screaming. Warm tears.

Marth lowered his weapon. His right hand clenched around the hilt but could not fully hold on to it. He did not look at his hand. He had avoided looking at it during the escape. He did not want to see-

The attack came from the left.

Turning to meet it, the swordsman lashed out with the blade. The man with the broken, bloody nose fell to the ground with a wet smacking sound. At that moment, the other assailant dipped down and scooped up the cleaver from the ground. He jumped forward, weapon raised.

Marth cut him down.

The rain fell, gentle and steady.

The swordsman took a breath. Inside his chest, his heart shuddered. He placed a hand over it, wondering if this dull ache had ever been normal. The blood that came away onto his fingers was warm and darker than what had flowed out of Chen's boy. A shallow wound, but still, he knelt down and retrieved a medical patch from the wet ground. He tore the package with his teeth. Even through the blood, the patch stuck tightly to his skin. His heart pounded within, fierce and rabbit-like.

But it would soon slow down to a steady pace. It always did. The part of him that was a machine would not allow anything else.

Raindrops were colder than tears.

And yet he remembered to kneel down and lay the apron back over Chen's face.

Marth rose and turned away. He brushed rain-soaked hair out of his eyes. With the bladed tool in one hand, he stepped on a large boulder and reached for the upper ledge of the ravine with the other hand. He almost dropped the weapon then. He could no longer pretend that both of his hands were whole.

He swallowed a cry. There was no time for that either.

Clutching the wet surface with an incomplete grip, Marth began to pull himself up.

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A/N: New poll up, and I'm requesting that everyone who follows this story please vote. The issue is that as I bring in other characters, the current cast is going to take a break while the others do their thing, though the separate story lines can be expected to intermingle. So the question is would you rather the episodes focusing primarily on other characters (yes, I promised Samus and Zelda, didn't I?) be posted as chapters to this story or as independent stories?


	9. battery 8

A/N: What chapter are we on?

Revised version.

Disclaimer: The following contains characters and concepts that are NOT the property of the author. They are the intellectual property of Nintendo, HAL Laboratories and their associates. This work of fanfiction is NOT endorsed by the original creators and is NOT in any way meant to insult the original work. The author has received NO monetary benefit from this piece of shit.

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(8)

Pico zoomed in on the splash of red that weaved in and out of his scope. He squeezed off another shot, but it missed and punched a hole into sheer rock. When that color reappeared again, it was higher up on the surface, visible for a second and then gone again. It was ascending - Pico didn't know how - partially concealed by a wall of sand and stone.

The sniper waited for a sign of movement. When there was nothing, he took in the panorama. Everything seemed still.

They would try to regroup, he knew, and they'd expose themselves eventually.

The rain was cold on the back of his neck, but the surgically altered ducts at his brows kept it out of his eyes. Droplets glanced off the resistant coating of his gun.

It would be a waiting game, and Pico always won the waiting game. He had patience enough to outlast the day and night, a kind of endurance drawn from years' worth of harsh training-decades lost to stalking quarry on the untamed plains that covered ninety percent of an entire planet. His home world had been a place where cataclysmic winds continually leveled any land formation trying to rise higher than a weed mole. Only leathery grasses with roots like steel anchors grew there, things that could bend to the wind without falling or flying away. They dominated the land, towering over buildings and ships. Pico had spent his youth among them, learning how to distinguish between their lush stalks and a Federation soldier's camouflage. It got easier after a time. The Feds were no match, not at first. All you had to do was knock off their helmets. The winds did the rest. The plains - his plains - could howl louder than a fleet of gun planes passing by at close range, and the screaming hurt the alien invaders, blew out their delicate ears, made them deaf and stunned and useless and curled on the ground, heads clutched in their arms, like skinned moles burning in the sun.

Pico wondered if the winds' rage to them had been like what Zoda's voice was to him.

But those battles were too long lost to think about anymore.

The mercenary was here now, even though he hated mountains and canyons. Hated, _sssssssssss._ He had adapted to their ugliness, but he would never enjoy them.

Below him, something caught his attention. Movement - it was the blue-hair, out in the open.

Pico hissed, pleased. At this range, he could probably get a kill without the scope. Head shots were more fun that way. But, at the same time, this was business.

He lowered the charge setting on the rifle and zoomed in. He fired.

A direct hit to the right leg - the blue-hair fell.

Pico watched as his target feebly tried to get to its feet. Surprisingly, its cries were not as fierce as he had hoped. It grabbed its wounded limb.

Pico waited.

When the blue-hair struggled to an upright position, Pico raised the charge setting and took aim at the other leg, at the knee this time. He had to be careful. He knew: work the legs, the shoulders, maybe an arm or two. Work slowly until the target's screaming eventually brought its companions out of hiding.

An old trick, this one. A tactic borrowed from wars these young ones had not been born in time to know.

Too bad for them, _sssssssssss._

Pico hugged the trigger with one digit.

_Now, squeal-_

Something scraped the ground behind him. Pico jerked back and spun around -

A full set of knuckles caught him in the face - landed with a crack - and sparks of color erupted. It rocked him to the side. Pico dropped the rifle, pain splintering through his head. He bounded away - or tried to - stunned, hissing.

He managed half of an enraged cry: "What are you - "

Blood Falcon threw a kick at his head, and Pico ducked. The second punch, however, was unavoidable as it plowed into the sniper's gut. The follow up slammed into the side of his head, brought him down, and then Falcon had him trapped beneath a flurry of fists. Pico clawed madly at his attacker, screeching. That sound too, he knew, hurt them. But all Falcon did was clamp his hands around Pico's throat and start squeezing. His digits expertly tightened against the artery on one side and Pico's voice box on the other.

Most humans would have gone for a pressure point he didn't have, a windpipe they assumed would be at the front of his throat. And even if they knew how to find Pico's air passage, this guaranteed nothing. One would have to choke Pico until the sun set before putting him to sleep - and he still would not die. But cutting off the artery - that would put him under in very little time, if they knew how to find it.

Not very many did. Knowledge of the anatomy of his kind was an obscure thing. Only those veterans of past wars would have ever learned it. And most of those men - on either side - were dead.

He flicked out his tongue and slapped Falcon in the face with it. Predictably, the man flinched, loosening his hold on Pico's throat by a mere fraction. It was enough for the gunman to get a knee in between them. A strong kick sent Falcon flying.

Pico hopped to his feet. The gun was nowhere in sight, but he didn't need it. Reaching over his shoulder, he drew the archaic blade from his back.

"Bounty Hunter," he hissed at the man facing him. "You had me fooled." He jumped forward, sword raised.

Stupidly, Falcon tried to block it with his arm. The blade cut into him, hindered only because the helmet prevented the tip from cutting any further. Pico brought the weapon down a second time along the man's upper arm. He hacked at Falcon again and again. The bounty hunter fell to his knees. And Pico continued - chop, chop, chop - tongue stuck out rigidly, his arm shaking with effort.

Briefly, he saw legions before him in his mind, Federation soldiers and their machines, mowing down all the tall grasses of the plains. Their guns cracked and sang. His brothers-at-arms fell around him.

Suddenly, something struck his back, something that drove coldness into him, through him, like a bolt of ice. He looked down. A steel tip protruded from his abdomen, stained black.

**x x x**

As hard as he pulled, Roy could not extract his blade. He struggled, but his victim twisted violently back and forth. Roy held on, fighting to keep his feet grounded. Wall-jumping had killed the strength in his legs. He needed to stay directly behind the green man, or else the blade in the alien's hand would thrust backwards into his gut.

Roy leapt up and wrapped his other arm around the gunman's throat.

Without warning, that misshaped green head shot backwards and smacked Roy in the face.

That got him good; the world went fuzzy; his arm slipped. Then, something got a hold of his armor, the sky and earth swapped places, and Roy tumbled over the gunman's shoulder. He hit the ground.

The next thing he knew, the tip of the blade was directly above him, rushing toward his chest, and he hoped the breastplate would withstand it, or deflect it, just enough to allow him to live.

_But Marth -_

A bulky form sailed overhead. Falcon's knee caught Green Man square in the face.

Roy rolled to his feet.

Falcon and Greenie were trading hits, but Falcon's landed more often. The blade the alien had wielded was gone. They struggled until the bounty hunter got both arms around the sniper's midsection and all but lifted him into the air. Even as the alien pounded his head (ineffective against the helmet), Falcon twisted around towards the edge of the cliff and hurled his opponent over it.

The green man, arms flailing, went into the drop.

Falcon himself came down hard right at the ledge.

Roy sprinted for the cliff. He shoved the bounty hunter out of his way and jumped over.

The ground came sooner than he expected. They landed on an incline and tumbled down. Roy recovered first and launched himself onto the alien's back. His victim responded by pushing off the ground with all four limbs. Roy was almost bucked off, but he secured a hold on his sword as they both fell further, rolling onto their sides. He grabbed at something only to have to tear off: the scabbard on the alien's back. Planting a foot against the other's backside, Roy kicked off as hard as he could. The other body slipped off the length of steel; Roy's sword was free.

Roy had barely made it to his feet when the alien leapt at him, snarling. Like a feral animal, his hands formed claws and swiped at the swordsman's face. Even as Roy attempted to move away, he felt it catch his cheek; it burned like the brush of a laser. Roy slashed outward with his sword, steel clashing with armor, pushing his attacker back. But before he could move in to deliver another blow, his opponent was sidelined by Falcon, coming down from above with the force of gravity. The bounty hunter rammed into the alien, shoulder-first, and the impact sent them both rolling.

Roy followed them the rest of the way down to the nearest segment of flat terrain, scattering rocks and wet sand in his wake The two had landed sprawling, collapsed next to each other. But by the time Roy reached them, Falcon would have risen to his feet while the other stayed in a crouch. Neither moved. Their eyes were locked; their breaths came heavy.

Seeing Roy's approach, the alien directed his words toward his main adversary. "This is not an end, Bounty Hunter." With that, he sprang backwards into the mouth of Red Canyon itself.

Unable to resist the impulse, Roy rushed up to the edge. The depths were dizzying. In the distance-at first-there was nothing, until he finally found a speck quickly becoming smaller. And then, it bloomed into a cloud of white and started to drift at a more even pace, riding the air.

Parachutes were cheating, Roy thought. He reached up and touched the side of his face. It was warm and wet. The damn beast had drawn blood.

The man standing next to him remained silent. After a moment, he turned away and began marching in the other direction.

"Hey!" Roy shouted, anger flaring.

The man, tall and broad-shouldered, his muscles evident beneath a wine-red suit, stopped only to withdraw a small device from his utility belt. He pressed it against the open wound on his left arm and compressed it. There was a soft hiss. The blood leaking from his split skin slowed to an ebb. Before Roy's eyes, the flow stopped all together. The bounty hunter's demeanor changed not at all. He ran his gloved fingers over his arm, wiping away the heavy blood, checking to see if the gash was sealed, as calm as if he were examining a paper cut.

"You," the swordsman said suspiciously. "I know you."

The helmet was a dark shade of purple, deflecting raindrops as if they were tiny glass pellets, and when the bounty hunter turned his head, the visor was in its usual position covering his eyes.

"Dark enough for you in there, or do you get night vision with those?" Roy asked. It was his standard greeting.

The man answered with his back.

"Or you got epilepsy or something?" Roy reached up to rap his knuckles against that ridiculous looking helmet.

But the bounty hunter avoided contact with a deft motion.

Roy gnashed his teeth. The rumors had been around back when he'd first started training under Marth's master. Roy had sometimes heard it said: there was more than one Falcon.

This one, though he wore the red suit normally attributed to his rival twin, had the muscle memory of a guy Roy had trained with, had used to enjoy pissing off from time to time.

"Bastard!" the swordsman hissed at him. "Do you know what they did to him while you were playing games?"

That made him stop. The bounty hunter looked over his shoulder. His voice was a muted version of the obnoxious battle cries he was known for. "Kid. I had a job to do."

"I don't care."

"Then don't bother asking me about it."

"Does he know? Does he know it was you?"

The bounty hunter turned away. "I could have ended it a lot sooner if they didn't call me out to tangle with _you._ Some kid prank like that. Storming the front gates like some damn hero."

"Yeah, leave it to you, and you would have just collected his body."

Falcon looked up.

For a moment, Roy didn't understand. Then he followed the man's gaze. A machine sped towards them from above.

Without thinking, Roy jumped to avoid it. But it came to a gentle stop in front of Falcon. It was red, with a hood shaped like a triangle and two panels in the back that could have stood in for wings.

Falcon stepped forward. The top of the vehicle opened up.

"Hey!" Roy shouted, his voice deep and scratchy. "We're not finished here."

Falcon climbed inside the machine. He set his hands to the controls, and turned to the other fighter. His mouth was grim, but his eyes stayed hidden behind the visor on his helmet.

"Get out while it's still raining."

Roy glared. "What are you talking about?"

Falcon tilted his face to the sky.

The drizzle was still light. It would pick up soon. Desert rains were notoriously heavy.

"They're harvesting rainwater," Falcon finally said. "Why do you think they haven't come after you yet?"

With that, the canopy lowered, and the engine roared. The red metal bird took off. It flew over the edge of the canyon and kept going.

Roy was not above shouting obscenities at its retreating form. The only reason he didn't was because a voice, in the distance, was calling his name.

**x x x**

Stumbling, Marth came down a little too hard on his injured leg. A sharp cry escaped from him, unbidden. He took deep breaths between clenched teeth to manage the pain. A torn segment from his cape, wrapped tightly around the wound, kept it from exposure but did not stop it from hurting. He had to rest for a moment. After another breath, he dared to raise his voice. He called Roy's name.

There was no answer.

They couldn't be so far apart, could they? Or was his voice that weak? Or….

_No._

He tried again.

The rain had soaked through his clothes. He shook. But he needed this-the water, more than anything.

He tried to focus on walking. He had to keep going. Roy was….

Faintly, a sound came from far off, softened by the wet ground. Either that or the noise of rain had clouded his ears. Marth did not recognize what it was, or what direction it came from, until it was almost upon him.

He turned around. "You?"

She answered with a gentle neigh. A programmed recognition.

Unable to suppress a smile, Marth reached out. He pressed his forehead to hers. "Hey, girl." Relief surged through him. "I can't ride you. I'm sorry. But maybe you can find him for me."

She flicked her ears in concern. Loyalty like this, Marth thought, should not be so easy; he had done nothing to deserve it.

When she neighed again, more urgently, he looked around.

The other swordsman approached sullenly, like a thing haunted, hair slicked down by the rain, cape hanging like a sodden rag. But having caught sight of Marth, he began to sprint, boots making wet sounds against the ground.

Marth wished he could run. Instead, he took the horse by the reins and limped his way closer.

They met halfway.

Roy held an offering to him with both hands.

His sword, in its battered scabbard, straps torn.

He accepted it with his free hand. The gesture lacked the proper respect he owed, but his other hand was holding onto the horse for balance.

"Let's go." Roy looked at their transportation. "Didn't I tell you to wait?" He paused as if expecting a response. "What, your tongue's broken?"

"Roy?"

"Nevermind. Come on."

Marth had to use both Roy and horse for support just to get his left foot in the stirrup, and he suffered a major jolt of pain through his right ankle just the same. It was impossible for him to bring his wounded leg all the way over the animal, so he drew it up on the same side and hooked it around the pommel of the saddle.

After passing up Marth's sword to him, Roy got on behind him. "Try not to fall off," he said to Marth, "sitting like that."

"I've ridden sidesaddle before."

"Why am I not surprised?" That would normally have been followed by a hard snicker and a prodding about whether Marth had misplaced his parasol. As it was...

"You'll have to direct her, princess," Roy said, not entirely without humor.

"She knows the way back," Marth replied as he secured his sword. Still, he leaned forward and took the reins. "There's a supply trail that'll take us down. It's partly paved; it won't turn soft in the rain."

"Isn't that too obvious for an escape?"

"Yes, but they're busy gathering rainwater right now."

"You sure about that?"

Marth stroked the horse's neck, whispering as he pressed his knee against her side. They started off at a quick trot. To Roy, he said, "Yes. What's the most valuable thing in the desert?"

Roy held onto his seat with one hand and kept his other arm around Marth's waist. "Depends why you're here."

Marth only half expected the firm mouth that pressed itself to the back of his neck. It lasted for just a second.

Against the storm and the darkened sky, they rode.

* * *

Chapter notes: Now at my new livejournal linked at my profile. Expect one more segment before this episode closes. Marth and Roy will take a break; Samus will take over for a while. The poll shows you guys to be about as indecisive as me with regard to keeping the episodes separate or together. Last chance to vote, if you haven't already. And, as always, thanks for sticking around and putting up with my delays.


	10. battery 9

A/N: Finally.

Status: edited for style and grammar (12/11/08).

* * *

(9)

_Marth remembered the morning - after, after - with unforgiving clarity: _

The sky was a dull blue; the air was still and empty.

He sat up. Roy's cloak slid off him like water. Marth shivered against its absence and looked around. The stiff weeds all around stood tall and unmoving. His sword lay where he had left it.

The other items scattered about were only his.

He refastened the clasps on his shirt and fixed the rest of his clothing with quick motions, as if concealing a mistake. Sleep had evaporated, and his mind emerged raw and exposed, unable to understand the circumstances.

The silence of the morning, occasionally broken by distant chirping birds, weighed him down and kept him rooted to the ground.

This raw flavor, languishing bitterness on his tongue, was something not so foreign to him. He had known it well in the past. No champion ever earned his title without first tasting defeat, after all.

It had been so long since Marth had last had to concede to another-whether on the stage or off it-that the re-introduction left him stunned. He had fought and bled during years of training to rid himself of the times when he would be reduced to this. Every once in a while, it was a thing worth remembering.

So, he would survive this.

He rose to his feet.

The daze abated a bit during the walk back to the compound. Numbness took over. He had overslept, he knew, and the others would be awake by now. He hoped no one would notice his wrinkled clothes, finger-combed hair still smelling of grass, or Roy's cloak, the wrong shade of blue, draped over his shoulders. His own cape, badly mangled from bearing his weight the entire night, had been wrapped around the sword he carried in one hand.

Students and fighters crowded the halls when Marth stepped in through the side entrance. His attempt to escape notice failed.

"Marth! Hurry, hurry!" they urged him.

If he didn't, he'd be late for his match. The final rounds were starting in a few hours.

He willed himself awake. He had to focus. The world around him seemed to shift, like clouds, like daydreams.

This was not real.

The true reality lay elsewhere, some place far away and unattainable, in a field of scratchy weeds, beneath an open sky and the cold night, the ground hard against his back, fire in the form of a half-dragon's son pressed to his skin.

At that moment, a pair of heavy doors slammed opened at the end of the corridor. Everyone turned and quickly parted, clearing a path down the center of the hallway.

Marth bowed as the Master approached.

"Where is Roy?"

Marth held a breath; the blood in his veins seemed to freeze. And then, he realized that the question had not been directed solely at him.

"Has anyone seen Roy?"

The others exchanged looks amongst themselves, confused. They all shook their heads. Marth offered no response, waiting for his heart to slow to a more comfortable pace.

The Master turned and headed back the way in which he had come. His heavy cloak trailed behind him. He did not looked pleased.

Marth exhaled slowly. It was the first time he had not been completely honest in front of his teacher.

Deliberately withholding information was a serious infraction. It went against the code he had sworn to uphold as his Master's servant.

That he would break a sworn oath for some low-ranking deserter was insufferable.

What a fool, that one. Roy had been brought into their ranks as charity. Cast out by his own teacher, he would have stood no chance on his own. He had been bred from birth for a single purpose. They all had. None of them possessed any skill except one. They relied on it for their livelihood And no fighter ever lasted in this business without a mentor.

Marth's teacher had been excessively kind. But of course, Roy would pay him back with treason.

It was such a foolish, juvenile move to play. Roy would find generosity nowhere else. No fighter was allowed more than one master, and Roy bore the marks of two-one on his right hand, the other hidden elsewhere on his body-because Marth's Master had shown such mercy.

No other school would ever accept him.

The price for desertion was that simple-to be ignored, to become nothing. The masterless lived as outcasts; they died destitute and nameless.

Even more severe was the price owed to the school for betraying its trust. Should he and Roy cross paths again, loyalty demanded that Marth carry out his Master's decree.

As a fighter, Roy had condemned himself to this end. Marth accepted it. In his anger, the taste in his mouth became less bitter, more sweet.

**x x x**

The storm followed them into town. Marth's fingers had grown stiff and cold by that time. The ache in his ankle became an intense pain. He could not feel much else.

The canyon was behind them. The road had hugged a jagged wall of sandstone as it carried them on a steady decline, the wall growing taller and taller above them, until they reached the river at the bottom. A trickle in a drying riverbed a few days ago, the water now roared to life beneath the downpour, surging up past its banks. Following the river's course had brought them to the main road leading into the settlement.

Roy spotted the modest structures in the distance before Marth could see them. The black clouds overhead cast shadows over the landscape, tinting everything so that Marth could not distinguish houses from rock formations until they were well within the boundaries of the settlement.

Roy helped him dismount.

Pain shot through his lower leg the moment he set his foot on the ground. His vision faded. He reached out blindly for support. Something caught him. A voice, coarse and very close but not his own, shouted for help.

Unwilling sleep took him then.

He slept through the remainder of the day and the entirety of the night and some more after that. In his dreams, the sound of pounding rain played on his memories. It was not an entirely unpleasant place to be. He had spent much of his life trying to reach this place.

Something rough grazed his cheek. He struggled through delirium until he finally woke.

For some reason, he had expected to re-enter the world on a battleground, to the sound of clashing steel and breaking bones. But it would be stillness and an unfamiliar room that greeted him. His blood had become a force rushing through his veins. It took several minutes to ease himself into a calm. No, there was no fight here.

He was on a cot, under a rough blanket. Walls of unpainted wood surrounded him. Sunlight from a small window picked up the dust in the air. Crates were stacked in the corner.

Next to him, Roy slept upright in a chair, arms crossed, head bowed.

Marth lifted an unsteady hand in his direction.

At that moment, Roy listed to the side, still asleep, and toppled over in his chair. The swordsman hit the floor in a graceless heap and promptly woke up. He shoved the offensive piece of furniture out of his way. He hissed some incoherent curse word.

Cuts and scrapes covered Roy's arms and the exposed portion of his chest. A medical patch was stuck to one side of his face; the other side had formed a large, red welt.

Rubbing his head, appearing groggy and aggravated, Roy looked up and met Marth's stare.

"Oh. Hey."

Marth opened his mouth to reply. Nothing came out. He stopped. He tried again. Air caught in his throat, but without sound. He took a deep breath and brought a hand to his throat. Something was wrong. How could a person forget how to speak?

Roy scrambled to his feet.

Marth blinked hard and found that only one eye blinked. The other was covered by bandages. He took deep breaths. Panic boiled in his gut. He tried again to form words and failed. His stomach clenched. A sensation like ice on skin started to spread throughout his body.

Roy stepped closer. For a while, he did nothing. And then, awkwardly, he brought his arms around Marth's shoulders.

Marth pressed his face against Roy's chest. His friend's shirt was stiff and dry, smelling faintly of rain-soaked earth. A calloused hand settled on the back of his neck. Its familiarity stung and comforted in opposing duality.

Something stuck in his chest made it difficult to breathe. His entire body felt disconnected from his mind. There was one spot, at the back of his neck, that hurt the most.

Marth reached with his left hand for his right. He counted the fingers there. He hesitated before touching the nub where his pinky finger used to be. It was bandaged in rough gauze.

Something occurred to him then.

_Did they know -_

He had meant to voice that question, but all that came from his mouth was a small choking sound.

Half blind and now mute. They should have just -

Roy's grip on him tightened. Marth pressed in closer to him. He liked the rhythm of Roy's breathing.

"Let's get out of here," Roy said, his voice low and grating. "It's been four days, and I already can't stand it."

A whisper slipped from Marth: "Yes."

That simply, his ability to speak had returned. He looked up and met his friend's eyes. Suddenly, he realized that this could not be Roy. It didn't look like Roy.

Marth drew back.

The other allowed this.

Marth, both eyes closed, shook his head. Something was wrong. He couldn't recognize his friend's face. This was Roy. He knew it was Roy. It couldn't be anyone else. But it didn't look like Roy.

Or had he forgotten his friend's face?

"You okay?"

What a ridiculous question.

**x x x**

In a meeting with the town council, Roy drew out the layout of Goroh's base onto a piece of scrap paper with black marker. The older, hard faced men pored over it. Roy kept quiet when he wasn't being addressed. He watched them as they exchanged weighted looks with each other. Dressed in dirty work boots-tools and plugs hanging from their belts-the men bore the air of field commanders in a war room.

In his mind, Roy considered all the different possibilities that could have brought them to this point. He imagined the events prior to his arrival. The police moved in on a small group of bandits, only to be ambushed by their comrades. He pictured boulders pushed off the top of the canyon. They tumbled and crushed the uniformed men below. That was one possibility.

The other?

He watched the faces of the workers around him as they talked quietly over the maps that were spread out between them on the floor. Roy decided that it was none of his business. Once he collected his payment, he'd be gone. He had what he came here for.

Roy's eyes wandered to the open entryway. In the room across from the door, Marth would be sleeping through the evening. But Roy caught signs of movement within.

One council member had not shown up to the meeting.

Clinking metal brought his attention back to the situation at hand. One of the men had come forward with a bundled up cloth and laid it down in front of the swordsman. Roy lifted one corner of the fabric and tossed it open. The pieces inside were silver. He counted them, pretending he could tell the difference between real and counterfeit currency.

A different man set down another offering in front of him. Roy's eyes widened. He grabbed the full jug of wine with both hands and popped off the lid to sniff at the contents.

The men seemed satisfied with his reaction.

Roy stopped caring if those silver pieces were real or fake.

They dismissed him after the sun had set and the night lamps were ignited. His muscles strained with the simple motion of standing. He took a breath and made for the storage room that had been cleared for Marth.

Peering inside, he found that his friend was awake, sitting up on the cot, but he was not alone.

Roy kept back and clung to the wall outside, just barely out of sight.

Marth spoke in low tones. "We clashed in the dark. I did not see him." After a long pause, he continued, "I'm sorry."

Marth's hand went to his chest, grabbed something, and lifted it up over his head. A small object exchanged hands.

The councilor held it protectively. She stood with her back to the door, and Roy could not see her face.

After a period of silence, she said something so quietly that it escaped Roy's ears. Marth inclined his head. She turned, and Roy ducked back out of sight.

She stepped into the hallway and turned to move in the opposite direction. Then she stopped and asked, "How long will you stay?"

Roy stared at her back. Her dark hair ran down the length of her spine, tied with a strip of red cloth. He noted the short sword at her hip.

"Tomorrow morning," he said, "if we can't manage it tonight."

She turned to face him. For a moment, something in her made him think of his old master. "Thank you for your help. The horse that carried you is yours." She offered a slight bow before moving on. Roy dipped his head in the direction of her retreat.

When the sound of her footsteps had faded away, he swept aside the curtain and walked in.

A small lamp set on top a stack of crates filled the room with weak, yellow light. Marth stood facing the wall as he gently pulled off his shirt. The clothing had been borrowed from their hosts. His own tunic sat on the cot next to him, washed and neatly folded.

Roy watched Marth's backside reveal itself in a clash of bruised flesh and white gauze. Red and purple blotches contorted as Marth laid the shirt onto the cot and reached for his own. In the dark, the fabric looked black instead of blue. Marth got one arm into a sleeve, but he couldn't manage the other. He sucked in his breath sharply, as if in pain.

It was then that Roy took a step forward. The other swordsman paused at the sound, and Roy almost didn't take another one. Marth shot him a glance over a shoulder before facing the wall again. That could not have been an objection, Roy figured, and so he continued.

Marth let his tunic slide off his shoulder. He caught it and draped it over the cot. His voice was a whisper. "Help me with this, please." He had pulled up one end of the bandages.

Roy took hold of the gauze and started to unwrap it. Marth stood still, arms folded and held up just out of the way. The layers gradually became translucent. Roy rolled up the bindings as he undid them so they stayed off the floor.

The stitches were thick, like fishing wires etched into Marth's skin. A Federation mining colony had no shortage of either medics or mechanics. They had done their best to repair him. A pair of staples nestled close to his right shoulder blade looked like part of the reason why he had had trouble dressing himself. The skin there had been hard to close, and they had worked carefully not to ruin the muscles.

As skilled as they were however, the chance remained that the damages would limit his arm movement. All of it would scar, as well, regardless.

Marth reached back. His fingers tugged at Roy's wrist. In compliance, Roy began to re-apply the dressing, more loosely this time. His arms may have lingered as he wound them around Marth's torso. This was familiar. The circumference of Marth's waistline had not changed.

And the slope of his neck was still the same.

Roy pulled the tunic off the cot and helped his friend ease into it.

Without turning around, Marth fastened the shirt at the front with deft motions. Roy stared at the dark cloth in front of him, realizing that its color was not a trick of the light.

When the other swordsman turned around, the shirt was properly fixed, all damages concealed.

To Roy's stare, Marth explained, "They were unable to wash out the blood."

But they had dyes for fabric. Roy turned to the cot and noted the darkly crimson cloak folded on top of it. It worked, he decided. It would help hide the parts that were badly mended.

Marth took Roy's hand. He peeled back the glove to examine the cracked skin underneath.

"Does it hurt?"

Roy shook his head.

"Your seams were uneven. I didn't know if it was because you had injured your hand."

Details never escaped Marth.

"My seams are always uneven," Roy answered. Sewing had been a part of his early training, but he never claimed to be good at it. Only his rival would have recognized his work.

The other boy did not let go of his hand. Roy couldn't take his eyes off those fingers, not until the other spoke.

"Tha - "

"Don't."

The prince looked away, and Roy stared hard at his profile in the hazy light.

Marth found his voice again after a moment. "Sometimes, I think I understand. Other times, I don't. You were never really one of us. Could it just be that your bloodlust compels you? You've questioned every order you were ever given except that which allows you to shed blood in the name of people whose lives you approach as an outsider."

"This has nothing to do with them."

Roy recalled the feeling of Marth's weight on his back as he ran through dark, winding corridors. Yesterday, he had been given the chance to clean his blade, the rain shower having replenished some of the settlement's water reserves. Human bodies leaked fluids when hacked and beaten into submission. Bones didn't crack easily, even with brute force applied to their weak points. Killing was hard work.

Marth didn't know that a group had been sent on a scouting mission two days before. They'd returned bearing trophies that served as proof of Roy's story. And so, Chen's body had hung from a lamp post in the town square alongside three others until the head councilor found out about it. She had ordered the corpses taken down and given proper burial. She had also slapped the scout leader so hard that his head might well have twisted off his neck.

Marth was holding Roy's hand now. Marth was shaking his head. Marth knew the words before they came out of Roy's mouth.

"Don't…"

But Roy risked a clumsy lunge into his friend's personal space anyway, seeking one of the few places where his rival was not impervious. His arms locked tightly behind the small of Marth's back. His mouth pressed against a familiar softness he had only tasted once before.

It grabbed him now as it had then. The hooks dug into his stomach and pulled. The memory of the canyon, its vast emptiness, came back to him.

Some gentle pressure folded around the back of his neck-Marth's wrists, crossed up back there.

Roy pushed his advantage until he had the other fighter up against the wall. He swallowed a sharp hiss of pain that didn't belong to him. The gauze felt rough beneath the black tunic.

Marth broke contact by turning his head. Roy pressed forward still, latching onto his friend's exposed neck with his teeth. Marth flinched, arching backwards. Roy worked his way up to the jaw line before Marth slipped in a hand and covered the other boy's mouth, eyes averted.

"Why are you here, Roy?"

Even if Marth's fingers weren't pressed to his lips, he wouldn't have been able to answer.

After his desertion, he had spent the next few years training under various informal teachers, masters without titles or schools. He received his lessons in restaurants, bars and back alleys. His sparring sessions came at the hands of other disowned wanderers. He had finally returned to Marth's school one summer. Had found it burned to the ground, students and instructors long having fled or perished. Roy didn't know then if it was one or the other.

No one defied the Federation and lived.

But there had to be a place, he reasoned, where society's misfits and terrorists could find refuge.

His first Master had chosen the coldest mountain in the world on which to build her school. Marth's teacher had been born in the desert, and rumor went that he had returned to the desert after his school was destroyed.

Where the land was the most brutal, that was where exiles found sanctuary. No one else would want to live there.

And where the master went, the servant would follow.

Roy wretched away the hand that had been pressed to his mouth. He surged forward, pinning that wrist against the wall, and caught Marth's lips with his own. It lasted only briefly before a knee rose and slammed into his inner thigh. It didn't drop him, but he staggered, and then Marth shoved him back and punched him in the face.

That dropped him.

The pain was sharp and immediate, growing on his left cheekbone.

"I'd give you anything except that."

Roy looked up, face throbbing, vision blurred. He blinked hard.

Marth had tears on his face. "We are at war. You don't know. You left, and you don't know."

Outside, an army stomped past, sending tremors through the floorboards. The beat, like battle drums, beckoned the two of them. Marth moved from his place against the wall and headed for the doorway.

Roy grabbed his ankle. Marth wavered for a moment before regaining his balance. "You're not well enough to join them," Roy said. "I know your master wants you to guard this settlement. I know what he's after." Marth didn't look at him. "I don't care. I came for you."

"Let go."

"Make me."

Marth pulled free. Roy didn't reach for him again.

"Or do you mean to stop them?" Roy watched his friend's expression.

Marth dropped to his knees. He settled his hands on either side of Roy's face.

"You left us. You were right to do so. It's better that you aren't involved in this." He kissed his rival's forehead.

"I came back," the other swordsman rallied.

"You know the penalty for desertion, Roy."

"You haven't killed me yet."

Marth said nothing.

Roy reached under his own shirt. He held out the tiara. It had taken some time to get all the blood off. "I'll do it again," he promised. "I'll kill for you again."

The tears were gone. Marth caught him in a fierce embrace and buried a face against his shoulder.

Roy wrapped both arms around Marth's waist again. And held on.

Outside, the marching gradually receded.

**x x x**

"_He left. I haven't seen him in four and a half years._

"_He told me that if I wanted to see him again, we would likely meet in a place like this._

"_I had been hoping…"_

The sun had barely risen when they set out for the next settlement. The desert accepted them with cold hands and silence, without complaint.

Their horse stayed mute during the trip. They dismounted when they hit trickier terrain, and Marth led her by the reins.

The winds grew strong and pushed fragmented clouds across the sky. Marth cast one glance after another behind him.

Roy kept ahead. He only looked back to make sure Marth was following. Often, he caught the other swordsman fondly stroking the horse's orange mane as they walked.

Rain fell again the next day.

The terrain offered no shelter. The ground became soft, and as they moved down an incline, Roy feared mudslides.

But eventually, they came upon thicker patches of shrubbery. This was a good sign. Roy glanced back at his friend.

Marth stood still, head tilted heavenward, both eyes closed. The horse stayed obediently at his side.

Raindrops poured over the swordsman's face and down his neck. In his hand, he held frayed, dirty bandages.

He opened both eyes to the sky.

Roy searched for the shade of blue he remembered. But the veiled sun had muted all color.

Marth then turned to him, blinking as if he were just waking up. The skin around his injured eye looked dark and red. Roy didn't understand what had changed. He only knew that something had. He extended a hand.

Their fingers slid together, folding around one another. Marth stashed the bandages under his belt and took the horse's reins in his other hand.

The next settlement had enough residents to be considered a legitimate town. Roy's silver bought them lodging at an inn. The recent storm even allowed for a price reduction on water used for bathing.

A room with a heater and padded sleeping mats was more luxury than Roy had seen in a long time.

**x x x **

The storm raged outside. It had come and gone in cycles for the past few days, washing mud down the streets. No one in town complained.

In their room, Roy kneeled behind Marth on the mat and undid the bandages.

Grey and purple marked his friend's pale backside. The redness and swelling were gone, and the stitches had not torn. Give it a little while longer, and those could come out.

"It's better," he said.

Marth kept one hand against the wall, as if for balance. He stayed silent as Roy pressed fingers to his back, testing for fractures.

When the wounds had been redressed, Roy gently nudged the other swordsman.

Marth took his hand.

A breath caught in Roy's throat. He allowed his hand to be guided until the palm touched lightly to Marth's stomach. The muscles there tensed beneath his fingers.

He waited a moment before he dared to move his hand further down. Marth's palm glided over his bare arm. It trapped him when he got too far.

He froze with three fingers beneath the fabric of Marth's pants, just barely resting on a thigh. Roy kept his eyes on Marth's shoulders as they rose and fell. He waited for a sign. Marth let you in when he wanted you in.

Finally, it came as a whisper, in an unconcealed voice Roy had not expected. "I would have told you where I was going if you had asked."

Roy couldn't answer immediately. He settled for: "I would have asked if you hadn't punched me in the mouth." Silence followed, and he wondered if he had given the wrong answer. "Shit hurts," he mumbled half-heartedly. "You hit really ha-"

Marth spun around in his grasp. It was an elegant maneuver for a guy on his knees, Roy had to admit. And effective too, the way he managed to shove the fighter down onto the mat.

It was too bad, then, that he was glaring in a way that suggested something else other than what Roy had in mind. So, at risk of physical harm, Roy attempted his worst skill: diplomacy.

"You wanna talk about it?"

Instead, Marth leaned down, dusting blue bangs against the other boy's face, and kissed him.

Roy let him unfasten the clasps on the shirt, let him push aside the cloth and trace the skin underneath, even as he hesitated over healing bruises and old scars that laced Roy's chest with both fine lines and jagged ridges. He'd feel guilty about the new wounds - and some of the older ones he recognized - Roy knew. But that was fine. They'd talk about it later. Or they wouldn't, which was more likely, and also fine.

The second time Marth offered his mouth, Roy grabbed him and returned the kiss with more force than he meant to. He couldn't help it. Marth was still only soft in a few places. Roy slipped his hand down past the bandages.

Marth made a small sound deep in his throat and broke the kiss, ducking his head.

Roy drew a knuckle along his friend's jaw line, surprised when Marth pressed lips to Roy's hand and looked up.

"Want you," Roy whispered.

Because he had no place using words like 'beautiful.'

Marth smiled anyway.

Roy lost his regrets somewhere in that smile, lost himself somewhere in between the knees that had his legs trapped. Guilt fell away the moment Marth touched lips to his chest-to hard bone, scar tissue and muscle-and moved lower. Roy tangled his fingers in blue strands of hair, head thrown back, eyes closed.

When Marth stopped, it was to lean up and plant a kiss at the other boy's throat. Roy locked both arms around him and threw them both onto their sides. Marth allowed it for a few seconds, and then he pushed back with just enough room to turn away. He pulled one of Roy's arms around him.

Roy tried to pretend that the gauze wasn't there, even as it brushed against his chest. He tried to pretend it wasn't wrong to tug off the fabric covering Marth's hips and bring their bodies together.

As the evening crept in and stole the day, the two swordsmen tried to steal it back. Some battles couldn't be won, but it was within the mortal spirit to try, regardless.

**x x x**

The rain let up a few days later. Roy spent some time in the town center. He came back with a plan.

"A caravan is heading east today. They'll let us tag along for a reduced fee, since we have our own horse."

"Why?"

Roy unfolded the map in his hand and held it up. He dragged a finger along the route to a city in the eastern province. "Tournament." As if that explained everything.

Marth merely cocked an eyebrow and went back to grooming the horse, the sole occupant of an otherwise empty stable. Even mechanical beasts required upkeep, and this one made appreciative noises when her caretaker ran the brush through her mane. The power generator in her stall hummed softly as she recharged, tethered by the heavy plug.

"It'll pay well," Roy promised. He slipped an arm around Marth's midsection. "We can do it."

Marth rested his hand on Roy's forearm. He seemed to weigh the prospect in his mind.

They had few other options. Masterless fighters were made wanderers by necessity. Roy knew this, and Marth would have to learn. He was now one of their class. Better to let the desert bury all memory of his former teacher, Roy thought. The only thing more contemptible than a student who deserted his school was a master who abandoned his fighters.

Marth had been the last. The others had died or fled in the final moments when the Federation soldiers closed in. Only Marth refused to leave his master's side.

That devotion would have lived on in legend if they had won. But they hadn't, and now was time to let that bond die.

Or kill it if it didn't die on its own. Roy wanted it dead. He needed it dead.

The other swordsman looked over his shoulder. "I'll follow your lead."

They quit the inn by midday, their few belongings packed. When Roy failed at bargaining with local shopkeepers, Marth cut in and took over. Polite and amicable, the prince still managed to negotiate prices in their favor, in spite of never raising his voice. Roy stayed back, trying to look imposing, like a bodyguard, or something, (something more respectable than a lap dog, anyway) and carried the goods out to the horse.

"Do I look like a mule?" she huffed when he tied the packages to her back.

"Better you than me," he retorted. "And suddenly you feel like talking?"

"I don't talk to people I actually like."

"Isn't that a little contradictory?"

"Figure it out, wise one."

She fell silent again when Marth emerged and took her leash. The streets had filled up during the midday rush. They navigated the narrow roads carefully, Marth keeping a hand on the horse's neck to keep her calm in the midst of the crowd.

At the town center, the traffic slowed to a complete stop.

An urgent feeling seized Roy in the stomach. He tugged at Marth's wrist. "Let's take another road."

But Marth had already seen something. "Wait here," he whispered, passing the leash to Roy. With that, he surged forward and was enveloped by the crowd.

Roy cursed. The horse raised her head.

"Do you smell that?" she asked. "Gasoline."

A growl tumbled out of him. "Wait here," he told her. She did not object. Roy charged forcefully into the throng. He elbowed his way through.

A machine came into view in the middle of the street, a truck almost too large to fit through the alleyways. The Federation insignia marked its armored plating. Armed guards, their faces hidden by black helmets, stood around it.

They had spread out a tarp on the ground. On the canvas, rows of corpses lay in exhibit, covered by stained sheets. Some had their arms raised in the air, exposed from the sheets, fists half formed, frozen in positions that could be called defensive or offensive, depending on the interpreter.

A large banner had been strung up across two lamp posts. Roy and some of the other bystanders got close enough to read it:

THE OFFICE OF PLANETARY SECURITY OF THE GALACTIC FEDERATION OFFERS REWARD FOR INFORMATION ON ANTI-GOVERNMENT GUERRILLAS…

LAW-ABIDING CITIZENS ENCOURAGED TO COME FORWARD…

Roy's eyes glanced over the rest. He turned and found Marth standing still, one hand lingering dangerously close to the sword at his side. Roy latched onto his wrist.

"Let's go." When the other swordsman didn't move, Roy leaned in close. "Swords don't beat guns. Let it go. Not our fight. Come on."

Marth did not take his eyes off the dead laid out before him. "Can men beat machines?" he whispered, his tone severe. He shot Roy a look. "You said you would kill for me. Did you mean it?"

Roy narrowed his eyes. That was almost an insult.

With a wary glance at the soldiers, Marth dropped to a crouch beside one of the bodies. It was a woman, judging by the slender shape of the wrists. Both arms protruded from under the sheet; both hands were clenched. Dust had collected in her long hair, coloring the dark strands a greyish white. A red hair tie lay tangled and frayed against the ground. Marth waited for the soldiers to turn their heads before he reached forward to pry open one of her fists.

He rose up a moment later, back turned, poised to retreat.

A shout from one of the soldiers stopped him.

The crowd drew back. Rifle raised, the soldier approached and prodded Marth with the barrel. The swordsman turned and lifted both hands slowly. He held out a gold bracelet. The soldier snatched it back and cracked Marth over the head with the butt of the rifle.

The blow resounded with a dull crunch. The swordsman fell.

Roy waited for the soldier to turn around before stabbing him in the kidneys. The man wore the same kind of padded armor that Goroh's bandits had worn, material resistant to laser and projectile weapons but not to steel blades. Gunshots erupted as the other soldiers fired into the crowd. They had seen one of their own go down but not Roy, crouched behind him.

Screaming, the people fled in a massive stampede.

Roy grabbed the soldier's gun with one hand when the man sagged to his knees. He wrapped one arm around the man's neck and fired at the nearest enemy, but the heavy rifle proved hard to control with one hand as it jerked away from his target and sprayed bullets along the ground and into the armored truck. The soldiers ducked, and one of them returned fire, only to hit their own man, whose body shielded Roy from their bullets.

"Hold still." The swordsman barely had time to acknowledge the voice before something hit him directly on the shoulder. The helmet of the dead soldier in his arms also bobbed oddly as Marth launched himself off of it and into the air. The gunmen pointed their weapons at him, but Roy had more control of the rifle now. He muscled the barrel in their general direction and managed to shoot down two of them in a stream of rapid fire.

Marth's sword cracked the helmet of one soldier as he fell to a landing. It severed the arm of another when Marth spun around to face him. He spun again, lodging the blade into the first man's throat. It broke through the spine on impact, and then Marth had deftly withdrawn it to disembowel the second man a moment before slicing through his neck.

The head landed next to the body. The other corpses twitched feebly a little while longer and eventually lay still.

Roy wretched his sword from the man he had killed and stumbled to his feet. His hand came away warm and slick.

Marth-blood staining his bare arms, trickling from his temple-stood completely still among the dead. He closed his eyes, head bowed, and muttered a few words, too faint for an observer to understand. (A prayer, Roy realized.) Then Marth calmly wiped his blade on his cape and sheathed his weapon. He opened his left hand. A silver chain tumbled out. After a moment's consideration, he hung it around his neck and tucked the small black orb under his shirt. He looked over at Roy.

Numbly, Roy held out his hand. "Let's go." His voice sounded hollow in the deafening silence that followed the fire fight. "I mean it this time."

A sound from behind him made him turn around. A few other bodies lay in the street, living or dead, he couldn't tell. Some had been shot; others had been trampled.

But slowly, the crowd was returning. They stared at the two swordsmen, keeping a safe distance.

Marth came forward. He bent down and picked up stones from the ground. Gently, he tossed them at the people gathered around. The rocks landed at the feet of a few young men, who stepped back, apprehensive.

"Pick them up," Marth said. His tone was kind, excessively so. "Throw them at us. Cast us out. Otherwise, you will be mistaken for our allies."

Roy gnashed his teeth and glared at the other swordsman. "You _fucking _martyr."

Marth reached out and took his rival's hand. "You always wanted to be a hero, right?" He smiled that same disarming smile that Roy was sure had killed more men than any single sword or gun.

The first rock bounced off of Roy's back, clanging against his armor. The second hit his arm. He sheathed his weapon and tightened his grip on Marth's hand. Together, they ran through the streets.

The mob parted for them. Roy couldn't tell if they were cheering or heckling. The rocks continued to land, but he stopped feeling them.

Their horse stood waiting, patient. He sacrificed one bag of supplies to lighten the load and climbed up. He offered a hand to Marth, who took it and got on behind him.

"Run."

She needed no other command. Her pounding hooves took them from the streets of civilization and out into the barren landscape. Mountains stood in the distance. Bronze sand and dirt made up the road. They headed east.

Roy wasn't about to ask if it was worth it or not. Only Marth kept promises to the dead.

**x x x**

battery : end

* * *

A/N: "Chase the Sun" will continue. Samus and Zelda to appear in the next segment...alongside Marth and Roy. That's right. It's been a long year. Full notes at the lj fiction blog. This update is 6,666 words without notes (according to this site's somewhat faulty counter). Coincidence?

As always, thanks for reading. Thanks for the support as I dragged my feet. Comments, whether positive or negative, are appreciated.


	11. armor 0

A/N: Boo.

Disclaimer: The following contains characters and concepts that are NOT the property of the author. They are the intellectual property of Nintendo, HAL Laboratories and their associates. This work of fanfiction is NOT endorsed by the original creators and is NOT in any way meant to insult the original work. The author has received NO monetary benefit from this piece of shit.

* * *

**Chase the Sun**

**Armor : start**

It had been raining 300 days straight. Not that he counted, or anything. In the dark, he opened a pack of crackers. The computer screen on the counter flickered with bluish green light as it scrolled through weather forecasts for a trillion and a half different locations on different planets.

He followed the crackers with canned water.

Apartments in the city came with sleeping compartments shelved into the walls and furniture that came out of the floors at the press of a button. The sleeping shelf was too much like the launch cell of a military deep space flyer. It triggered all the wrong responses from his body. Recovery had been slow this time.

Space could wreck a man in many ways, he knew. All that fancy engineering and medical treatment still couldn't fix everything.

Maybe they fixed nothing.

Progress only meant that people pushed out further into the unknown. And out there, on the frontier, humanity's safety net got thinner and thinner.

He flipped open the pill box and sorted through what was left. The drug stash was running low. He chose the inhaler at random and took a hit.

There'd been too many days like these. Too many years locked up in dumps like this one. These prison cells never came with windows.

As the high washed over him, the room lost dimension. It would come back later, but there was no fear or anxiety as ordinary objects became foreign and unrecognizable. Instead, he was thinking about snow in Alaska, for some reason.

When they woke him up in this century, he'd been impressed the most by their pharmaceuticals. No two highs were quite the same.

Neon dots raced in crisscrossing lines across the walls, up and over the ceiling. It looked like his first view of a city from the high window of a hospital.

The drugs they gave him eased his alienation. It didn't matter that there wasn't a familiar face anywhere in the world, or that he wouldn't find one in any of the crowded streets in any city, on any planet, anywhere in the known universe.

"You still need guys like me?" he remembered asking.

No friends, no family. Government property.

The first time he came back from a deep space assignment, he couldn't use his legs. Gravity pulled at him, like a magnet. His whole body was dead weight. And suddenly "up" and "down" had become fixed directions again, just when he had gotten used to them being relative.

The vacuum knew humanity's fears, everything man's ancestors had feared from the beginning. Out there, alone, weightless, anchorless, that fear manifested in a vastness that never ended. That fear bred many different variants of insanity.

It was because of that fear that not everyone could go out there. They had explained it to him.

But he could. He survived it.

They sent machines most of the time, a young woman in Federation uniform had told him; they didn't send people unless they had to.

His purpose was the same as it always had been.

Some things don't change. Humans weren't the only things in the universe that could fly. The new worlds that the Galactic Federation sought and wanted - needed - were also wanted by others.

When negotiations stalled, they sent machines.

If the machines failed, they used guys like him.

War was dismal work, but it kept him employed. Others like him got pulled out of wet labs across the galactic system everyday.

He stood apart from them now. He had a name and a reputation.

No one else had ever gone up against the Metroid Hunter and lived.

Alone, in a room with fixed directions, he rode a chemical high for the rest of the afternoon, with the rain hammering down from above and his memory of the huntress' steel blue eyes cutting through the darkness like a beacon.

**x x x**

He woke up hours later to what sounded like crying.

His head hurt.

The weak night light had clicked on.

Someone in the compound was having a bad day, and it wasn't just him.

But it wasn't his problem.

He reached for the water and drank the rest of the can. Then he reached for the cigarettes and found that he was out.

Outside, the rain kept on. He wore a jacket and a hood just to go to the vending machine on the corner. He stopped on his way back, at the entrance to the motel lobby where he'd been sleeping.

There was a small greenhouse on the roof of the building. Some days, he went up there.

It seemed like a good place to go now.

He climbed the stairs on the outside of the building, hugging the wall just to get cover from the overhang. Water dripped from the rails and bars. The metal was cold under his bare hands.

At the roof, he opened the flimsy door and stepped inside. The air was warmer in here. The door swung itself shut behind him.

Rows of potted plants stood clustered together on their stands. The floor was rough asphalt, covered with leaves. Nothing out of the ordinary grew here. The housing authorities were responsible for the upkeep of the place, and only the hardiest of weeds managed to survive that negligent oversight.

Something growled, a feral animal sound. He froze in place, nerves alert, muscles tense.

At the base of a skinny tree, a girl turned her head from where she knelt among a few green shrubs. A dog emerged from behind her. It took a few menacing steps forward, but she stopped it with a sharp command.

The dog didn't attack. Its dark grey fur was soaked with rainwater. Those eyes - sharp cold blue - never strayed from the intruder.

The girl said something, but it was in a language he didn't understand.

He shook his head.

She tried again. She asked, "Are you real?"

"As far as I know," he said.

Maybe that was his cue to leave.

The girl ran a hand through the animal's wet fur. "Don't let him scare you," she said. "He's just being overprotective." She cast a meaningful look across the distance between them. "Would you like to meet him?"

"Sure."

She whispered to the animal. The dog trotted forward. It paused halfway, front paw raised, and turned to look back at its owner. She didn't say anything more, and the dog marched up to him and sniffed his boots with suspicion.

Without thinking, he offered his hand. The animal gave him a tense glare. Then, hesitantly, the dog raised its nose and sniffed his fingers.

"He's a fine animal," he said.

The dog didn't settle back. It stood ready, alert, eyes on him.

Not a dog, he realized suddenly. Dogs didn't have eyes quite like that.

The girl rose to her feet. Her dress clung wetly to her skin. In the weak light, her skin was pale, her hair dark brown, damp, and pressed to her neck and shoulders.

The wolf looked at her, as if awaiting orders.

She took a step forward, closer, out of the tree's shadow.

He saw the shape of her ears under the soft lamplight.

So, he thought, not human, after all.

She turned to examine a row of tiny flowers growing in plastic trays. "The rain doesn't stop," she said. "I can't stand to hear it."

The wolf returned to her side, ignoring everything else, even the robotic gardener napping by the shed. Overhead, clouds covered the stars. Rain tapped against the glass roof and cascaded down the curves. The storm sounded different in here than it did outside.

Or, maybe, it only seemed that way to his ears.

"I didn't know trees could grow here," the girl told him, stooping to look at a twig-like orange tree.

He hadn't expected to find anyone up here. He wasn't sure if he wanted the company or not.

"This one looks unusual," the girl said, eyes on the orange tree.

"Don't know much about gardening." His head still ached faintly. But the air was better up here than it was in his apartment. He just couldn't remember the last time he'd had a casual conversation with a girl he didn't know. "Are you new to the area?" he asked.

"Yes." She wandered in between the rows of flowers.

He followed idly.

"Do you live here?" she asked.

"Something like that."

"Shall we introduce ourselves?"

"Dave," he offered.

"Ah. Then, Dave, tell me, does the rain ever stop?"

"One day out of the year, yeah. You'll know when it happens. The whole city celebrates."

"This is a strange place. Does the lightning ever come this way?"

"Sometimes."

She glanced at him out of the corner of her eyes. "You didn't hear that?"

"Hm?"

"The thunder."

He paused and listened. There was the sound of rain, but nothing else.

And then, the wolf snapped its head straight up. That was the funny thing about animals. They were always one step ahead. Dave looked up just as the glass shattered. He hit the ground and rolled over a patch of dirt, knocking aside potted shrubs and small trees.

The roof came down in pieces. Something crashed into the floor, along with a shower of broken glass and rain. The impact shook the whole building.

He looked up. The water-slick form of a woman in gleaming blue stood in the center of the dust cloud.

Half of the lights had gone out, but he knew that there was a gun pointed at him, knew, without seeing her full face, that this was a settling of scores.

He ducked into another roll when the neon razor wire came at him, cutting through the foliage, the tables and stands, scattering leaves and petals. He only had two things on him, a gun and a knife. He drew the automatic pistol now - an archaic projectile weapon, the only familiar face he had in this place, this time - looked up, and saw her silhouette flying high over him. Humans didn't jump like that, he thought, not like they were flying - not without _tech_ - and he opened fire.

And then the wire flashed, torching the skin across his chest.

Maybe, he screamed. Maybe he didn't. But the world got bright and fuzzy, and there was blood on the ground. Glass shards cut his hands when he tried to push himself off the floor, tried to get up, realizing too late that the wire had a hold of him. It yanked him off his feet, smashed him into broken brick and splintered branches. The floor scraped against his side, everything kept spinning, and then he was in the air. The wire released him.

He hit the ground hard, and the pain kept him there.

His mind screamed at his body to _get up get up get up you're in a FIGHT soldier_ -

But she was in the air again, almost on top of him. The gun was gone, and he fumbled for the knife with one hand.

Light flooded his eyes again, but softer this time. And ice blue.

Something stood between him and the Hunter.

The pain dimmed. He figured it was a good thing, and then he blacked out.

**x x x**

He'd come back broken and unconscious, that time - the mission that'd earned his rep - stitched together by the ship's automated medic system. It would take him weeks to learn how to keep his eyes open for more than five minutes. It took him even longer to walk again.

But he'd got them what they wanted.

The only problem was: No one knew how to use it. All the computerized data they had, gathered from years of security footage, glimpses, and brief encounters with the Hunter, had amounted to a lot of speculation and theory. But when they saw the actual thing, all those scientists and engineers suddenly had to pull back and re-evaluate themselves.

They would spend a year trying to sync the thing with a human pilot. The suit never responded, not even in retaliation.

After so many failed trials, someone at the Fed's main lab finally got wise.

No man could pilot it.

They needed a woman.

**x x x**

They were slivers of shadowy ink in an orange pool.

Marth watched them float and mingle, changing shape and direction. He couldn't guess their intentions, if they had any.

"Roy? Do you see that?"

Roy looked toward the setting sun. "Birds," he said.

"Where are they going?"

Roy watched silently. "Nowhere," he said, turning away. "They're circling."

Vultures.

* * *

A/N: Dedicated to Mild Guy. For no real reason other than for reminding me that Samus Aran is not a normal woman.

Also, Readers: Let me know how I'm doing. The new poll on my profile lets you rate of the overall quality of my work - or me as a human being, depending on your interpretation.


	12. armor 1

Status: Revised. (07/15/10)

A/N: FFnet can't make up its mind about hyphens. I apologize for any confusion. I think I got most of them.

Disclaimer: The following contains characters and concepts that are NOT the property of the author. They are the intellectual property of Nintendo, HAL Laboratories and their associates. This work of fanfiction is NOT endorsed by the original creators and is NOT in any way meant to insult the original work. The author has received NO monetary benefit from this piece of shit.

* * *

**Chase the Sun**

**Armor : 1**

_Sometime in the past:_

Without her armor, Samus emerged from the treatment chamber - health almost restored - to the collapsed ruins of a morgue. Her chamber had been shoved into one of the slots which they used to store dead bodies. She climbed her way out, over broken rubble and pieces of the dead. Beyond the partly standing doorway, she found more corpses. The medical center was wrecked. Few walls were left standing. The bodies of the staff lay scattered throughout the grounds.

It had been one of the few places where she allowed herself to be treated. The disgraced doctor who ran the clinic operated without license. He had been an associate of Falcon's.

One or the other might have betrayed her to the Federation, but someone had kept the chamber locked and sealed during the firefight. Someone had set the unit to mask her heat signature, even as her metabolic rate hovered at the barest minimal. She would have been broadcasting as an unidentified deceased human female on most scanners.

By the time she'd woken up and pulled the escape lever, it was all over.

In the aftermath of a battle, the scene told the story. Samus, well versed in that language, read it easily. They had stormed the entrances and shot down targets where they stood. Doors and chambers were cut open with laser cannons. The damage to the building structure came afterwards, via explosives meant to cover their tracks, which had also burned many of corpses beyond recognition.

It wasn't the work of Space Pirates.

She knew two things: 1) The Feds had her suit; 2) they wouldn't be keeping it for long.

They hadn't stayed to secure the scene. This meant they didn't have permission from the local government to be there. They were acting out of their jurisdiction, and they knew it. Officially, they would deny ever coming here.

She found her ship in the exact same place where she'd hidden it, off the premises and underground. The security barriers hadn't been tampered with. Her own scanner told her than the Chozo-specific toxins had been cleared from her body. The damaged tissue was repairing itself.

A species scan glitched between human and unknown.

She was almost herself.

She wondered, briefly, if the soldier who'd thrown the poison bomb was still alive. He might have been a corpse by now, floating in a one-man escape pod, a coffin flying on autopilot.

The next question for her was: Which way?

She knew where they expected her to go. The heart of the Federation was at the center of galactic civilization: the Hub.

So she set out for the Frontier.

On those primitive worlds, they fought with spears and sabers, in places where industry and technology had not gained a solid foothold. It was there she would have to find a trainer.

Without her armor, she needed to learn to fight their way, without tech.

She found a school with a reputation, and the teacher accepted her gold without question.

Nights in the desert were cold, but Samus Aran acclimated quickly.

She buried her equipment - her gun, her ammunition, her comm unit, the keys to her ship - and she committed herself to the life of the Grounded, the life of one who had never set foot off the home planet.

She filled her days with physical conditioning. And when the other students talked, she listened without saying a word.

They were simple as a people. Space-faring society called them "primitives." But, as Aran found out, they knew things. They knew how to start fires. They knew how to find water, how to climb mountains, how to track quarry in the desert.

Most importantly, for Aran, they knew how to fight with bare knuckles and teeth, without guns, without machines, without armor.

The days were hot, but Samus Aran could adapt.

Weeks drained into months. They told time by the warmth of the wind as one season changed into the next. They watched the stars and charted the constellations. In a way, they were like those ancient astronomers Samus had known, who had first mapped the skies ages before man. In that way, they were like her first teachers.

Her body stopped hurting from the physical exertion. Her knuckles no longer bled as she struck padded bags and panels of wood.

Life seemed easier there, away from the Hub. But it couldn't last. Some things had a way of finding you, Aran knew this. If not the Space Pirates, then the Galactic Federation. The Pirates had been quiet lately. Even they had been forced deeper into hiding as the Federation stepped up its security across the systems.

And then, the wind blew in cold from the mountains one day. A year had passed. She broke her seclusion to head into a local settlement for news.

Word had reached town that the Federation was increasing its presence on the Frontier. The Space Pirates had taken the heat for the massacre at the clinic.

She went back and dug up what she had buried.

There were protocols to be followed. Age-old rituals still governed the lives of these people. Those rules gave her an obligation to request permission before leaving, to ask for forgiveness, to keep the door open should she return, to say good-bye and part on good terms.

But, in the end, it wasn't her world, and it wasn't her culture. She had been born on a deep space colony. She'd been taught by old star-crawlers and world-jumpers, those who'd set out for distant planets long before human beings had learned the trick of flight. She came from a lineage of Spacers.

These people were Primitives, and she would never be one of them. She'd seen too much.

The sun was setting when she walked through the gates of the training grounds for the last time. And then, her ears registered an agile body landing softly behind her.

When she looked back, he was standing there, by the pillars, one hand on a hip, legs apart.

He said, "You are not the only one who has passed through these gates with a private agenda."

He paused briefly, as if awaiting a response. At her silence, he continued, "I just have one question."

The needle made a zipping sound as it shot past, grazing the front of her chest. She'd dodged it just barely.

He closed the distance between them before she could blink. His foot planted in the center of her chest. Samus took the hit and fell back into a roll. Her lungs struggled; the air had been forced out. But she was on her feet before the next kick came. It missed. He landed in front of her, and she struck out quickly, without thought. Her fist hit nothing but air.

She lept back, trying to put space between them. She saw the swing of his arm, and she stepped off to the side, expecting another needle. What she did not see, not at first, was the chain in his hand. She realized her error only when the weapon followed her path. It slammed into her back and wound around her torso. Then it jerked up and pulled her off her feet, spinning her into the air. She sailed high, away.

One of the pillars came flying at her - or rather she flew at _it_. She spun, kicked at it, came off of its surface, and began to fall.

Samus landed on her feet; a cloud of dust rose up around her.

She looked up at her teacher. He had landed one hit and one throw; Samus had landed none, but none of his attacks had taken her down either. They were even.

He pounced - a rapid two-step jump she'd seen numerous times in training.

It was then that she fired the gun she'd told herself she wouldn't use, not here.

The charge fizzled out into empty space. He had disappeared in a characteristic wisp of smoke.

Samus dashed forward. She knew him, and when she looked over her shoulder, he was coming down from above, over the spot she'd vacated, just like she knew he would. He spiked a kick into the ground.

She aimed the gun behind her, steadied against her arm, and shot him.

He took it full force. The stun power knocked him down, into the dust and sand. He lay there, unmoving except for the rise and fall of his chest.

She lowered her gun.

The sun had slipped below the horizon by now. In the compound behind them, lamps were being lit. The desert held its peace, and a chill wind began to blow.

He sat up. He folded his legs, knees outward, and crossed his ankles, lotus-position. Nonchalant, he reached into a secret pocket and withdrew a pipe. He summoned the flame with a gesture and a murmur. Then he pulled down the scarf from his face and placed the pipe in his mouth.

Against the torchlight, it was the first time Samus had ever seen her teacher's face.

"My question," he said, after a few puffs. "As a woman, you could control no small number of men to fight your battles for you. And yet, you choose this path. You fight like a man, more than any woman I've ever trained.

"What will you do when you meet your match among men? You may carry yourself like one, but you can't escape the truth. When you realize the limitations of your body, will you still try to be stronger than them?"

She holstered her gun. She had neither the words nor the time to tell him about it. History. It involved the life and death of a people - her people. It involved pain, genocide, slaughter and dark places on alien planets where the terrain shifted and spoke, where dead civilizations left their mark in ruins and cryptography. In her early childhood, what remained of that memory, she might have once known that thing which protected humans from their own curiosity, which stopped them from challenging the unknown. That thing they called fear.

Fear of strangeness and the dark and the inexplicable. Fear of the vacuum, that emptiness that went on and on beyond you, without you. The fear that claimed more colonies than disaster or starvation or Space Pirates. Even as a child, she remembered those who failed to adjust, those who couldn't _adapt._ They ran in fear from things that no one else saw, and they had to be kept in small rooms where they couldn't hurt themselves. Eventually they would break out and run themselves off of a cliff, or into a pit, or into the turbines of a power generator.

That primal safety net was gone now from within her. It had been replaced by something else. There was no word for this new thing, not out of the human languages that she knew.

There was no Hylian word for it either.

Instead, she told him the blatant truth:

"It's not a matter of strength.

"It's a matter of effectiveness."

The torchlight danced across his face. He regarded her with neither reproach nor sympathy.

Shifting light and shadows drew her attention to the gates. There, a crowd of students had gathered with lanterns.

Their teacher pulled the pipe from his mouth and rose to his feet.

Samus made a fist and held it over her heart. She bowed to him in the traditional manner.

He did the same, his forearm cutting diagonally across his chest, over the scarf and Sheikah eye.

**x x x**

The wolf napped on Dave's sleeping shelf, as if it owned the damn place. The tense discussion ensuing in tight quarters didn't cause it to stir.

"The plan," he said.

"Your freedom," she answered.

"What?"

"In exchange for my Suit."

"I don't know anything about it."

Samus Aran didn't fill a room with her presence. Instead, she was exactly the inverse of that, standing casually against the wall across from him. Looking at her was like looking out the viewing portal of a deep space craft hurtling through the infinite vacuum between planets. You fell into it, and the fall didn't end until your survival instincts kicked in and forced you to pull back to a safe place.

Dave figured that now was probably a good time to get off the drugs.

She leaned forward just then, toward him, and he had a fist ready, even though the apartment hadn't been built for three people, much less a slug-fest. But then elf-girl was there, suddenly, in between them, an open palm out on either side, pressed firmly up against the both of them.

They both recoiled from her touch.

"Please," she said. "No violence. We've already drawn attention."

"That wasn't my fault," he pointed out.

"I spoke with the gardener," the girl continued. "He will help us avoid exposure. But he requires some assistance from us."

Aran was still staring him down - a tall woman, an impressive build, pale hair tied up, blue eyes electric. He hadn't gotten a good look before. The Federation officers had some grainy footage that they weren't sure about.

There'd been talk that she wasn't human.

Dave didn't like being this close to her, wanted to put a safe distance between them. But he had nowhere to go. This confined space - cut into the concrete bones of a world where rain fell for every day of the year except for one - was all the freedom they would give him. The Feds were the law; they wanted peace. But he didn't care about their cause. He just needed to be of use, even if he didn't like it.

The young lieutenant who worked with him as a part of the task force on the Metroid Hunter had been a tight-lipped, by-the-books lady who took a while to warm up to him. Sometimes now, she let her guard down. She'd even come here once to see him.

That wasn't enough to count as a life. But without the work they gave him, without the medical support that came with it, he had nothing. He'd been severed from everything else he'd known.

Now it was a choice between the rented coffin, the insta-cook meals, the endless sound of rain, and the solace that came in pink and green tablets - and the Metroid Hunter. Walking death and genocide and this little airy-fairy girl who talked to plants and dogs.

She'd healed him though, and he wasn't in pain anymore. Future tech was all magic to him.

He leaned back against the cold wall and drew out the cigarettes from his front pocket. He ejected one from the metal case, took it between his lips, and turned the box around to click the lighter on the other side.

These were his choices.

He took a slow drag.

An hour and a couple pills later, he was holding up a piece of the greenhouse wall while Samus sealed it to the rest of the building.

Someone was talking behind him, but everything was bright and soft-looking, and he didn't care what happened at this point. The rain still fell, through the one half of the roof they hadn't repaired yet, and it was cold and calming, and the world was a fucking wonderful place.

They managed to patch most of the damage with bio-space plastic. He didn't like the way Samus held the nail gun, but the fuzzy edges of the leaves on all the plants kept him preoccupied.

The longer he stared, the more it looked like the flowers had teeth.

"Beautiful, aren't they?" elf-girl said.

She soothed the dirt in a broken pot - held together by tape - housing a small shrub. Dave could have sworn the plant was smiling.

Next to him, something beeped in agreement. The small robotic gardener who tended the grounds rolled past him.

"Is this good enough?" the girl asked.

The robot's head panned 360 degrees. Then it tilted its head to the side in an imitation of human expression. Its eye shutters closed and opened. It beeped a few times.

"I'm glad to hear it," the girl answered.

Dave was glad he hadn't thrown away the pills.

"Samus." The girl spoke the name with familiarity.

The bounty hunter sealed the final edge of a wall patch before she turned around.

"Does your ship have room for a few extra boarders?"

"No." Aran's eyes narrowed. "We've wasted enough time here already."

"As a favor, please. They won't take up a lot of room." The girl held up a potted flower and parted the leaves.

It took a second for Dave to realize what he was seeing.

"WHAT THE - "

They were tiny people-things, bright and multicolored.

The girl let one of them climb into her palm and held it up.

Even Samus was staring hard.

It looked like a little man in a bubble helmet.

"He's a stranded traveler," she said. "Much like you." She was talking to Dave.

Dave turned to Aran. "Right now," he told her, "you're the only thing in this room that makes any goddamn sense."

**x x x**

Roy fell, in the dark. Sand scraped his skin. Blood, that familiar taste, rose in his mouth. His chest was stinging.

He tried to push off the ground. Somehow, his hand missed.

Groaning, he rolled onto his back. With his left arm, he felt for his right. He grasped at air and dirt until he found it.

His hand closed over a wound-warm, slippery, sticky. There was nothing else.

He screamed. The tears spilled over onto his face.

Behind him, footsteps pounded on the ground. Someone was coming. He rolled over, surged to his feet, and took a blind leap into the ravine. The landing was harder than he'd anticipated. He lost his footing and tumbled down.

A beam of light swept overhead in jerky motions. His opponent couldn't see in the dark without that lamp. If Roy had broken that lamp, he would have won the duel. It would have been easy. Break it. Break it. And then Roy would have gotten him. Simple.

So bloody simple he had fucked it up.

Marth would -

Would laugh at him. Attack weaknesses, he'd said, years ago. You won't win a fight trying to do it _your_ way. Read the situation. Adapt. Idiot. Before you get -

Fucked.

He laughed and cried in the same breath. This wasn't the fucking plan. This wasn't-

The sole of a shoe pressed down on his throat.

He swallowed blood.

Over him, the outline of a face - a man he didn't know. It was older, washed out, almost not there.

The light flickered on suddenly and turned the whole world blindingly white.

Roy froze in place, his vision lost.

"You're just a child." The voice was calm, intelligent and rough around the edges.

"F-f-f-fu - " The words wouldn't leave Roy's throat.

"Do you know who I am?"

Squirming, Roy tried to force out a syllable of speech. It merely gurgled in the back of his mouth.

The man didn't answer. But the light may have panned to the side. The whiteness seemed to shift slightly. Roy still couldn't see.

Steel - cold, solid - traced down what remained of the swordsman's right arm.

"I see now. There's no penalty for this, you know. It wouldn't be a crime for me to kill you."

"Fuck you, asshole." The words finally came together.

Roy's assailant let out bitter laughter.

Then the pressure came off of his throat. The whiteness pulled away. The footsteps retreated.

He was gone, but his image remained, burned into Roy's eyes by the light.

Alone, curled up like a crushed insect on the ground, Roy was finally able to put everything together.

Those were wooden sandals.

The blade must have been specialized steel, strong but flexible, and single-edged. The man had wielded it with two hands for the most part. By the way it had clashed against Roy's sword, he would guess: a high carbon, low carbon blend.

Black sand steel. Had to be.

_Tamahagane._

Roy sucked in a breath, his chest straining, and shouted an obscenity to the ground. Dirt and sand crept into his mouth. He pushed himself up with the one arm he had left.

And then he began to crawl.

He had to. Had to get out of this place.

He had to get back to Marth before Samurai Goroh did.


	13. chase the sun

A/N: 2nd revision (11/01/10).

Disclaimer: The following contains characters and concepts that are NOT the property of the author. They are the intellectual property of Nintendo, HAL Laboratories and their associates. This work of fanfiction is NOT endorsed by the original creators and is NOT in any way meant to insult the original work. The author has received NO monetary benefit from this piece of shit.

* * *

**Chase the Sun**

Marth watched the sky. The weather had been unpredictable lately. Clouds stretched out overhead in ragged patterns, showing no intent to stay but in no hurry to leave. Perhaps it would rain tomorrow or the day after.

He withdrew from the doorway.

Roy hadn't come back yet.

Mindlessly, Marth began to straighten out the sleeping mats and arrange the few possessions they had.

Whoever had built the shack had left it bare upon abandoning it. Its roof had been in desperate need of repair when Marth and Roy first found it on the side of the road. The door was missing from the frame, and a few panels had been torn off the walls.

Roy had declared the place a rat's nest.

"I believe you must have slept in worse places."

"It's not my delicately pampered ass I'm worried about."

Lodging in town was too expensive. With the tournament approaching, the local vendors had taken to price-gouging. So they had settled down and repaired the place, patched the roof, built a new door. They decided that the open yard could be used for training.

As Marth surveyed the room now, a dull ache pinged him in the side of neck. He pressed his hand against it, trying to soothe the pain away.

Roy's teeth had marked his skin there not too long ago. It still hurt.

_Blame him or blame yourself,_ Marth thought. _Does it matter? _Wild dogs don't know why they bite. It's the fault of those who trust them for getting bitten.

The wine jug lay empty in a crevice between cracked floor boards. Marth, broom in hand, swept around it.

Outside, the clouds drifted by. Sunlight fell in patches through the dusty rags they had hung up over the open windows.

The debris was soon swept out the front door, and Marth set the broom aside. He walked out into the yard.

In the small patch of shade by the well, the mechanical horse waited. She woke up from standby as he approached. He clucked gently and reached out to stroke her forehead.

She let out a low hum at his touch. Her ears flicked. Then she turned her head.

He followed her gaze.

A young boy came down the dirt road. Marth watched as the child trudged under the sun and heat. The boy stopped at the weathered gate, with its rotted wood that they had yet to repair. Then he came through it and into the yard. He wore a backpack, and he carried a long bundle in his arms.

Marth went forward to greet him.

The boy set down the package, took off his red cap, and wiped the sweat off his brow. He nodded eagerly at Marth. "Hi!"

"Hello. What brings you here?"

The boy gestured toward the well. "Please, sir..." He was out of breath.

"Of course. Come here." With the boy ambling behind him, Marth went to the well and drew up water. He dipped a bowl into the bucket and offered it to the boy, who took it and gulped down the drink.

"Have you come a long way?" Marth asked.

"Yeah, and I still have a long way to go."

"Where is it that you are headed?"

The boy handed back the bowl, empty.

"Home," he answered simply.

"You're brave for going so far by yourself."

"I'm used to it."

"Do you want more water?"

"No. Are you Marth?"

The swordsman pulled back slightly. He took in the child before him: sweat-soaked brown hair, shoes dusty from the road, a colored shirt faded by the sun.

"Is that the name of the person you're looking for?"

"I'm on an errand for someone. He told me Marth was the name of a blue-haired swordsman with a scar over one of his eyes who lives in a house along this road."

The boy had an honest face.

Marth had left his sword inside. Now he eyed the package that the boy had propped against the well, something wrapped in a thick dirty blanket.

"I am Marth."

"Okay, this is for you then." The boy picked up the bound package and handed it off to him.

Marth accepted it with a feeling of unease. It was heavy.

The boy put his cap back on. He looked at the sky. "Do you think it might rain?"

Marth wasn't listening. His eyes were on the bundle in his arms. He pulled at the strings that held the package together.

At once, it unraveled. Something with off-white wings fluttered out and fell to the ground. But Marth wasn't concerned with that.

He was cradling a sword in his arms.

The hilt didn't shine like it did in his distant memory - from the bottom of a lake, on a clear day, with a gleam so bright he couldn't have missed it.

Now, dust and sand covered the length of the blade. Dried blood coated the edge.

He realized then that he had known, ever since that morning when the dawn arrived without a familiar shadow shuffling in through the door, smelling of whiskey, mumbling curses, dropping a coin purse that on some days was heavier - on other days lighter - than it had been before it left the house.

Roy had once told Marth about his old master, who had threatened to cut off his arm if he ever lost his weapon during battle.

Pain rose up from Marth's stomach, a deep hurt that could have buried him in that instant, but he swallowed it down. He told himself that later, later, he could have those feelings. But right now -

Marth let his eyes find the half-rolled up piece of paper that had fallen to the ground. He knelt down and picked it up.

On it, written in thin strokes of brush ink: a date, a time, and a location.

**x x x**

Dirt wasn't supposed to talk.

But someone was giving a monologue, and it sure as hell wasn't him.

Roy tried to push himself up off the ground with the arm that wasn't there. He fumbled, off balance, and slipped, falling facedown back onto the ground.

A voice above him said, "Looks like some parts are still working. Maybe you're salvageable after all."

Something nudged at Roy's face. The swordsman looked up, right into the curious face of a perky yellow rodent with pink cheeks.

It tilted its head to the side, as if Roy were an object of curiosity. Then it leaned forward to sniff him.

Roy hissed and gnashed his teeth.

The rat recoiled, eyes wide, frightened.

"Hm, you're not a very nice one."

Roy raised his head. His muscles strained.

Above him, a short man in a white coat regarded him with the thoughtful expression of someone trying to figure out a puzzle for fun.

Roy coughed out the dust that had collected in his mouth. "Who. The fuck. Are you?"

"Me? I'm a doctor. But it looks like you need a mechanic."

"Yeah."

The short man squatted down. He held out his arms.

Roy gave the stranger a wary look. But he knew he didn't have very many options. "I." He sputtered. "Can't. Move."

"Oh." The man moved closer and to the side. He wrapped both arms around Roy's torso. With a rough pull and a roll, he managed to get Roy up to a sitting position.

He examined the stump where the swordsman used to have an arm.

"Hm...we've got to stop the seepage," he murmured to himself. He dug around in a bag at his side. From it emerged a roll of dressing and a roll of duct tape. He set to work with the dressing first.

"This is an impressive setup you have here," he said after a while.

Roy was too tired to answer. He looked up at the sky. The sun had reached its peak.

"What day is it?" Roy asked.

"Which calendar?"

"I don't know."

The man didn't look up from the remains of Roy's appendage. "How's your memory?"

"Fine. I just want to know the date."

"Did you black out back there?"

"Maybe. Not sure."

The doctor tore off a strip of duct tape. "If you ever want to do this for yourself," he announced, like a tutorial, "be sure to put the dressing on first, then the tape, then another layer of dressing. The second layer is just for looks. But it helps. I know you want to avoid unnecessary attention."

"Right." Roy blinked hard. The world was darkening.

"I think you're low on fuel."

Roy's eyes fluttered. "Wine," he said.

"I don't drink." The doctor pulled out a gold coin and muttered a few words to the rat. It nodded, took the money in its mouth, and ran away.

"He knows the way to the local tavern."

"K." Roy took a shaky breath, fighting the darkness. "Owe you."

The doctor laughed. "No no. I took that money from your purse."

"Fuck." Roy couldn't keep his eyes open anymore. He let them slide shut. But his ears didn't turn off.

"I was wondering. Who is your master?"

Roy sat hunched forward, head bowed. He had to keep that position in order to stay upright. He lifted his left hand off the ground. Without opening his eyes, he brought his hand to the circlet wrapped around his forehead.

He slipped it off.

There was a moment of silence.

"Ah... I see. I met your master, once. She is a remarkable designer."

"Yes." His fist clenched tight around the fabric headdress.

She had marked him during the graduation ceremony. At her school, they used hot irons. He remembered feeling the heat before the metal even touched his skin. When it first made contact, the pain had almost been tolerable, but it only took a split-second to intensify into a blinding, mind-numbing fire. He reached his limit of endurance. And then it took him beyond his limits. And then he felt nothing. When he finally opened his eyes, he found that everything had become lucid, bright, and deathly quiet.

It was the last time he'd ever felt such peace.

After she disowned him, he'd had to endure a demotion. He restarted under Marth's master, beginning again at the basics. Only after climbing the ranks again was he given a second brand.

Marth's master signed using needles. It was a different kind of pain. His hand had burned for days.

He tried to recall that pain now, tried to bring it back. Slowly, slowly, it came to him. Eyes closed, he imagined his arm and willed it back.

Something answered. A ghost of a feeling, a presence.

He felt it: starting with the memory of the needle in his palm, to the wrist strained by hours of sword practice, to the elbow that had once split open a man's face in a bar fight in Mute City, all of it connecting to the shoulder (still attached) that had twice been dislocated in battle.

Against his will, tears streamed out of his closed eyelids.

If he didn't try to move it, it felt as though it were still there.

The ghost of an arm.

**x x x**

"Sir, are you all right?"

"I'm fine."

The boy adjusted his backpack. "Thanks for the water."

Marth took measure of the child once more. "Who gave this to you?"

"A man in town."

"Someone who lives there?"

"No. He said he was a traveler."

"Did he give you his name?"

"No, sir." The boy straightened up. "Is something going to happen?"

Marth wrapped Roy's sword in the blanket. "The only thing that will happen," he said, "is what is meant to happen."

The boy stared at him. "Did that sword belong to somebody?"

"A friend."

All he could think about now was Roy - years ago - sitting alone in the training room, the day after receiving his brand, untying his own bandages, not looking up when Marth came into the room, not seeing him until he had knelt down in front of Roy with a clean cloth and bowl of cold water. He had let Marth take his hand, had let him tend to it, had asked, "Where's yours?" And Marth had shown him the underside of his wrist.

"Why is yours in a different place?"

"We used to always do it here, but it bled too much."

"So you guys changed it. But why the palm? I can't hold my sword now."

Marth had never seen anyone else get angry over the ritual. Everyone else felt it an honor to receive the mark. "When it heals," he said, "your grip will be the same. Wear gloves. Our rule is to keep it hidden."

And Roy had looked on in silence as Marth took care of the injury, fury smothered for the time being, held back by some impulse.

_He looked at you differently, even then._

Now, in the shade of a well, on the outskirts of some desolate border town, he held Roy's sword in his hands, and the plans they had talked about while lying together, in the dark, no longer mattered.

The errand boy spoke up. "Um, sir. If you don't mind..."

"Yes?"

"Are you a psychic?"

"No. Why do you ask?"

The boy seemed confused. He kicked at the dirt. "Well, sir. I just thought that you were."

"May I ask why?"

"It's because I can't read your thoughts."

The boy's eyes were pitch black. He had an open friendly face, otherwise. It distracted from the unusual nature of his eyes. Marth knelt down in front of him and gently set down Roy's sword.

"You have that kind of power?"

"Yes. I know other people can't hear what someone else is thinking. That's why they talk to each other. But sometimes the things they say aren't the same as their thoughts."

"It must get loud inside your head."

"If I try, I can make it quiet. But if I want to listen, I can hear things."

"You have a talent."

The boy shrugged.

"I hope you will learn to use it well. Use it to protect those closest to you."

The child's black eyes looked into Marth's. "But when I concentrate, I still can't hear your thoughts."

Marth felt a half-hearted smile glide across his face. "If you could," he said, "you'd be the first."

**x x x**

With a full bottle of wine in him, and a half hour spent dozing between sleep and wakefulness, the world finally stopped being so fuzzy and dark.

"My brother lives in town," the doctor said. "He might be able to help you."

"Is he a machinist?"

"Not really. Not too many of those around here. But he knows a few things. He's a real self-taught man. Fixes pipes for a living. That's his specialty."

"I'm not a fucking sink."

"Well, yes, I can see that."

Roy glowered some more. Then he ducked his head. "Thank you," he managed. He dug out a few pieces of silver. "For your time, doctor."

"No, no. I'm not a mechanic. Besides, I've met your master. So I know you're here on her orders. No one in his right might would stand in her way."

Roy turned to the rat. "You want it?"

"Chu!"

The doctor snatched the money out of Roy's hand. "In that case... Don't give it to the rat. He eats the silver ones."

The rodent seemed somewhat disappointed.

They parted ways on the road. The doctor headed into town, his little yellow mouse bounding along ahead of him.

Roy set off in the opposite direction, away from town, out toward the dusty barren wilderness. The wind whistled in his ears. He had no compass. But then, he'd never needed one to find Marth.

**x x x**

"Come back tomorrow," Marth had told the boy before sending him off with a full canteen. "If you find no one here, please take my horse."

And then he had watched as the young traveler took his leave, hunched over under the weight of his backpack, until he disappeared along the road.

Marth went inside for his sword.

When he came back out, his cape was draped over his shoulders and his weapon was at his hip. He looked back one more time. The room was sparse and clean. Ready for the next drifter who came down the road.

Marth had already decided. No matter the day's outcome, he would not live here anymore. If he came back, he'd take the horse and ride out through the gate, take the road away from town, and keep riding until he found something else, some other place.

Somewhere without the memory of his loss.

He unwrapped Roy's sword again. He tested its weight. It was heavier than his own. He wondered how Roy had ever been able to wield it with one hand.

Marth drove the blade into the ground beside the well. He knelt down in front of it and dug into the earth with his hands. When he had cleared away enough sand and dirt to make a small hole, he took off his tiara. He placed it inside the hole and smoothed the earth back over it.

Just in case, he told himself. Just in case there was no one to bury his body either.

He bowed his head, clasped his hands, and said a quick prayer to the forces that ruled the universe.

Then he rose to his feet. He turned away and walked out the front yard. He took the road away from town.

A harsh wind wrapped its wings around him. He followed the road. It eventually crossed a small trail heading toward the mountains. Here, Marth stepped off the road and followed the trail.

The locals knew about a lake that appeared during the rainy season. It would be completely dried up this time of year. They said that a tree grew in the center of the lake bed, a hardy desert variety. When the lake filled with water, the top of the tree stood out above the surface.

Marth glanced at the sky. The sun was starting its descent.

He had a few hours to find that tree. He almost regretted not taking the horse. When the light faded, things would get dangerous for him. A few weeks ago, the black birds that hovered low against the sunset had been mere phantom shapes. Now, as the clouds rolled across the sky, the desert took on shades of hazy grey.

Marth kept his eyes forward.

**x x x**

The horse was in the yard. That should have been a good sign.

But as Roy closed in, something about the scene looked wrong. He sprinted through the front gate.

There was something stuck in the ground near the well. Something that gleamed in the sunlight.

His sword.

He ran to the house. Wood splintered when he kicked down the door.

There was no one inside.

The sleeping mats were rolled up and set neatly against a wall. In the back window, the wine jug sat alone on the sill. The canvas they used for a curtain had been pulled back slightly to let in the sun and breeze (there was no glass pane).

Roy turned and ran back out into the yard. He woke up the horse.

"Oh. It's you."

"Where is he?"

"Well, I think he - wait, what the hell happened to you?"

"Nothing. Where is he?"

"That doesn't look like nothing. That looks like you're weighing a lot less than you used to."

"Shut up. I don't have time for your bull - "

"A messenger came. There's a note in the blanket by the well."

Roy found the blanket. He unfurled the sheet of paper. The note was nothing but the current day's date and a location, the name of a lake.

"What an asshole." He crumpled the paper and tossed it aside. Roy started toward the horse, but stopped.

His sword.

Turning back, he reached for it with the hand that wasn't there.

The scream that tore out from his lungs surprised even him.

And then he was on the ground, pounding the earth with his fist.

When he was done, the horse looked him over. "Well, that was productive."

Roy pressed his forehead to the dirt and sand, panting. "I'm fine."

"I'm sure you are."

He got up. He reached for the sword with his left hand. He pulled it from the ground. After some fumbling, he even got it into the scabbard that had never left his side.

That was going to be a problem. He would have to draw with his left hand from the opposite side. Roy had always drawn with his right hand, from the same side, in reverse grip.

He'd only known one other swordsman who drew with his left hand.

He grabbed the saddle on the horse with his one hand and struggled to get on. Leaning over for balance, he managed to do it without falling on his ass.

"You know the lake with the tree in the middle of it?" he asked.

"I do."

"Then what the fuck are you waiting for?"

**x x x**

A man waited by the tree. He leaned against a car made of pink metal, polishing a sword with a piece of cloth.

Marth came to a stop at a safe distance before him.

The stranger's eyes were hidden behind round, black glasses. A stout, broad-shouldered man, he wore a leather helmet adorned with a patch on the front. The patch was marked with a red painted sun and crimson rays.

He eased himself off the car, lifting the blade of his sword and resting it on his shoulder. "You are the swordsman called Marth." It was a statement, not a question.

Marth dipped his head slightly. "To whom do I owe this honor?"

"Take a guess, boy."

Marth kept his hands at his sides. "I'd rather not."

"You did a number on my guys back at Red Canyon."

"Then you are the criminal they call Samurai Goroh."

There was a quirk at the man's mouth. "Was it really necessary to kill my cook?"

Marth didn't answer.

"I know you have no personal interest in my operations. You belong to someone. So the question is, what interest does your master have in Red Canyon?"

Again, Marth met the question with silence.

"I guess you won't answer. You are manufactured loyalty. Your lips are sealed..." Goroh shifted his body, bringing one foot back, settling into a stance. "Unless I take your head."

"You won't."

A small smirk crept onto Goroh's face. It was the only warning before the sword came off his shoulder.

Marth drew his weapon only when Goroh was within reach. He deflected the overhead strike and spun out of the way. He parried the next attack and countered, but Goroh tilted out of reach, and Marth's blade only grazed the man's jacket.

The samurai was quick to move in again. His swordsmanship was faster than his stocky build would have suggested.

Marth blocked and dodged, but the hits kept coming. Goroh stalked him as he tried to circle away.

Marth watched his opponent closely, the way he had been trained to do. Goroh's swings were wide but fast. His blade had a formidable range. His defenses seemed solid.

But he was telegraphing his attacks. Maybe a bit too obviously.

Goroh pulled back for a big swing. Marth swayed off the line of attack, watching as the blade swept past, mere centimeters from his face. An opening was there, suddenly, and he struck, aimed it at at the man's exposed chest.

But Goroh slapped his sword out of the way.

Marth pulled back again to a safe distance. He hadn't seen the man move. He should have. He could not afford to underestimate this one. But his sword felt heavier than it used to. His four-fingered grip couldn't twirl the weapon with the same efficiency.

"You play a safe game," Goroh said.

The man had been trying to read Marth, the same way Marth had been trying to read him. The exaggerated movements had been bait to draw him out.

In that moment, the desert seemed to dim, as if a candle were going out in a room. The terrain lost its texture to an encrouching darkness.

Marth froze for a half second, long enough for Goroh to attack. Slow on the parry this time, he felt the sword cut into his shoulder. He lashed out quickly in retaliation but failed to connect.

Goroh's sword came at him again, the strike meant for Marth's neck

The swordsman ducked under it. He sweep kicked the other man's leg.

Goroh stumbled, off balance. Marth spun around, rising, and threw another kick at his head.

This one connected.

The samurai hit the ground. He tumbled and landed in a crouch. He raised his head, ready for the next move, eyes hidden behind the glasses.

It was as if the sun had set in the middle of the day. Goroh, crouched low against the ground, was a half-shadow, shapeless and ill-defined. Marth stared at the patch on the other swordsman's helmet, the small bit of white surrounding the red painted sun. He waited for it to move. He didn't know how much the other could see. He could only assume that Goroh saw more than he could.

Marth raised his sword, ignoring the pain in his shoulder, the warm blood soaking into his sleeve, the sting of it almost pleasant.

In the distance, he heard the pounding hooves of a horse. But he could not spare the moment to look for it.

Goroh attacked.

In that instant, the desert flared up gold and bright. Marth's eyes were drawn upward. An edge of steel bisected the sky.

That was his blood, Marth knew, painted on the blade, the same color as the samurai's sun.

**x x x**

Roy bore down on the trail, the lone tree in sight ahead of him. He saw two figures in motion, swords drawn.

The horse ran at top speed.

A red cape fluttered. It looked like a distress signal - or a sign of defeat. That was all Roy could see before he pulled his feet onto the saddle underneath him and propelled himself into the air. The ground tripped him up when he landed and sent him tumbling.

He scrambled to his feet and ran.

He saw Goroh, charging, sword raised over Marth.

He didn't have time to cry out a warning. It would have been too late anyway.

Clouds rolled by overhead; sunlight spilled out like golden water.

And then Goroh fell.

Roy stopped so fast he almost tripped over his own feet.

The samurai lay sprawled on the ground. Marth held the tip of his sword against the man's throat.

Roy gaped. He shouldn't have been worried, after all.

The horse ran past him and braked hard, slowing from a full gallop to a walk. It was the animal that caught Marth's attention.

And then his eyes found Roy. Slowly, he withdrew his weapon from his enemy's neck. He took a few steps away from where Goroh lay. Then he faltered and sagged down to his knees.

Roy ran to him. Words failed to come. He dropped to one knee, meant to take Marth in both arms, but could only hold him with the one.

Marth looked up from Roy's chest with unfocused eyes. He spoke with the voice of someone just pulled up from the depths of the sea.

"Are you real?"

**x x x**

Goroh set his helmet down on the hood of the Fire Stingray. He hung his glasses over the front collar of his shirt and lit a cigarette.

He ignored the throbbing ache of his wounds, the tightness of the bandages.

In his breast pocket, he carried a memory chip embedded in a protective black orb on the end of a silver chain, the consciousness of Chen's son waiting in suspension for rebirth.

The one with the red hair had wanted to kill him.

But the other, the soft spoken one with the despondent eyes, had lifted the silver necklace over his head and dropped it into Goroh's palm.

"Tell him - " And then he'd stopped. Dark blue hair covered one side of his face, as if to conceal the badly scarred eye. He had looked up at the sky, as if watching for rain.

And then he said, "Tell him you won."

They both left him there by the tree, taking the trail by foot. One led the tired horse by the reins; the other walked beside him, casting one more glare back at Goroh - a warning - before looking away and marching on without another backward glance.

Goroh expelled the last puff of smoke from his lungs and dropped the spent cigarette to the ground, where he crushed it beneath his sandal.

He put together some plans in his mind. The Red Canyon base would be re-built. Operations would resume. No one, not the Feds and their soldiers, not a Master of Design and his toys, would stop him.

A drop of rain hit his forehead.

He looked up. And, yes, there was that too.

He wondered how much a body cost on the black market these days.

**x x x**

Marth polished his tiara with a corner of his cape. Roy had gotten the fire going in the hearth. Sitting on one of the floor mats, he stared listlessly into the flames.

Marth set his work aside for the moment and reached for his friend's shoulder. He made the mistake of touching the stump.

Roy jerked away. His face twisted into a silent snarl. The look in his glassy eyes promised violence.

Marth drew back slightly. "Roy..."

The other jumped to his feet, fist clenched tight.

"We'll find a way," Marth said.

Roy grabbed the wine jug off the window sill. It flew into the wall, where it shattered.

"What way?" he demanded. "There isn't a way."

"If we can find - "

"Money. Everything takes money. How am I supposed to work now?"

Roy had staked everything on the tournament. They hadn't considered any other options; there was no backup plan.

Marth stood up and went to gather the broken pieces of ceramic off the floor. He dropped to his knees and reached out across the wood panels, feeling for the broken fragments

A sharp pain bit into his skin. He pulled his hand back in surprise. Blood filled the center of his palm.

"What are you doing?" Roy asked.

"I'm trying to pick up the pieces."

"Are you sure you're not trying to cut yourself?" There was the sound of fumbling, Roy looking for a clean cloth. He felt a strip of fabric pressed to his palm. Roy was crouched in front of him, wrapping a bandage around the cut.

"Man, WHAT is wrong with you? That was a big piece too."

Marth tried to imagine the expression on Roy's face. "I can't see them," he said.

"Can't see what?"

Marth stared hard at the floor. It was a dark solid thing, no detail, no texture. "I can't see beyond the fire."

Roy's hand came up and took the side of his face, gripping him tightly.

Marth imagined that Roy was gritting his teeth, his eyes burning with the same fire as when he was forced to admit defeat.

"What the fuck are you saying?"

"What I'm saying is I can't see your face right now."

There was a pause. The fire crackled gently beside them.

"Sonofabitch."

Marth trailed a hand up the length of Roy's arm, over his shoulder, up his neck, and found his face.

"Are you crying, Roy?"

The fingers on the side of Marth's head slipped back and yanked him by the hair. He let out a small gasp of pain, but Roy only pulled him closer.

The kiss was hard and unapologetic.

Then Roy took him down, and Marth's back hit the cold uneven floor. Above him, his friend was only a faceless shadow. Marth felt the burning of fresh tears in his eyes. So fate had decided that he would lose this too, all of it. There was nothing he could keep, nothing he was allowed to cherish. The forces of change had swept through everything he knew. The school where he had trained was gone; his Master had turned his back on the world and wandered into wilderness, never to be seen again. The new world had no use for their skills. And it would not replace what it took; it would not give him a new purpose. Their traditions would die now, as men with ships that could cross the stars came in with machines to dig into the earth for new gold, for mineral, for the sacred power that ran their engines and built their empires. To build the machines that would destroy his life and his people.

Roy leaned down and pressed his mouth to Marth's neck. "We'll be fine." His voice had changed. He bit him in that same place, but gently now. A sensation like cold wind spread down Marth's spine, making him arch his back. Almost instinctively, his hands reached up to take their places, one on the back of Roy's neck, the other on his shoulder blade.

Roy tensed. Marth was holding on to his damaged side.

"I have a request," Marth managed to say. "Before the darkness takes me - "

"Shut up. It won't."

"Roy - "

"No. Listen to me. We'll stay in the light. Bright, high noon light."

"How?" Marth whispered. "That isn't possible."

"It's possible," Roy said. His breath was warm against Marth's ear. "We'll fucking _make_ it possible. We keep moving. We'll chase the sun."


	14. atone

A/N: Guess who's back?

Disclaimer: The following contains characters and concepts that are NOT the property of the author. They are the intellectual property of Nintendo, HAL Laboratories and their associates. This work of fanfiction is NOT endorsed by the original creators and is NOT in any way meant to insult the original work. The author has received NO monetary benefit from this piece of shit.

* * *

**Chase the Sun**

Atone (0)

Marth remembered his first defeat, coming from the hands of a fighter known as Falcon.

The swordsman had a reputation for being untouchable in battle. That was why, when Falcon's fist caught him in the jaw, the entire crowd of observers fell silent. The blow had made him see stars. And then a knee got him in the stomach, and Marth dropped to the ground, coughing, choking, vision blurred. The hits kept raining down on him. His thoughts scattered. Falcon had fists like steel.

Then it all stopped. The silence rang in Marth's ears. He struggled to open his eyes. The man who had defeated him was standing over him, mouth set to a straight line, indifferent and dismissive, looking at him the way one would look at garbage tossed by the side of the road.

Like something broken and left in tatters, completely inconsequential.

Marth couldn't speak, couldn't move. He could barely feel his face. He remembered something warm spreading across his skin and later realizing that it must have been his own blood.

After the fight, a day later, he picked up a mirror and almost dropped it. The face in the reflection didn't look like his.

He had never thought about the value of a face before, not even his own. He had taken it for granted, had used it his entire life, without even thinking about it. His face had helped him earn the favor of strangers. They stood a little straighter, paid him a little bit more attention, and only because they found him beautiful. Doors had been open to him that would not have been open to another.

Men whose looks had been marred in fights, their faces beaten by fists and slashed by swords, had no choice but wear to their scars openly, or else hide them in an obvious manner, as Falcon did, behind a mask. Marth had known these men all his life, had fought them, had dealt further injury to faces already ruined with smashed noses, cauliflowered ears and partially severed fingers. Men like these had always detested him because he had never been cut during a fight, had rarely ever had to take a hit. It was evident by his face. They mocked him for it the same way they mocked his slighter stature and his composed mannerisms. They also absolutely hated the length of his hair, the front bangs always getting in his eyes, his practiced motion of sweeping it to the side. They hated the cut of his clothes, the fabric well-fitted, clinging to his body at times. He knew because he always caught them looking. The revulsion on their faces was obvious and deep-seated.

So he decided that he would never make it easy for them. He didn't cut his hair. He wore the tiara. He paid special attention to his grooming. He walked with a slight sway to his hips. He made sure to treat them with the same reproach that they showed him. He learned how to cut down their egos with a single glance.

He stopped short of wearing flowers in his hair. And, in battle, he beat all of them, all the tough men and their pride and their fear of what his looks would do to them.

And they all hated him for this.

So when Falcon walked through the gates of the school, an unranked fighter with only a street reputation, a man looking only for something new, the others had all secretly hoped that he would be given a chance to fight Marth, their top student.

They hoped that Falcon would crush him.

Falcon wore a mask, and his expressions remained a secret. Marth would never know how the man viewed him. But it became irrelevant in the middle of the first round because Falcon carried a power that was unmatched at their school. With fists and elbows, Falcon picked apart Marth's game. He gave the swordsman his first defeat outside of training and the first greatest beating of his life. In so doing, Falcon would also avenge all of those men who had come before him, those who had fallen to skilled and brutal swordplay while cursing the elegance of the wielder.

Marth could only imagine how the other fighters must have cheered as they watched his beating. Especially the wreckage of his face.

Victorious, Falcon left the next day, already moving on to the next challenge.

Marth's wounds healed slowly. There was no permanent damage done to his face. But he learned from that defeat. He swore that the next time he raised his sword on the battle stage, no one would dare to sneer or laugh at him.

**x x x**

Master Sheik was rumored to have a sister. The first time Samus ever saw her had been through a partially shuttered window one cold night while on patrol. On instinct, Samus always caught on to changes in the terrain, such as openings to passages that had previously been blocked. So it had been the slightly parted shutters that drew her attention.

A lamp was lit on the window sill. Its flame caught the profile of a girl brushing her hair by the mirror.

Samus always kept a catalog of faces in her mind, an old habit. This was a new face. She had never seen this girl before.

Even so, there was something familiar about her.

Then the girl turned toward the window, as if she could sense that she was being watched. Samus hid around the corner, partly out of habit and partly out of a sense that she shouldn't have seen what she had just seen.

Samus spent most of her time alone. It had taken her years to understand basic social customs. For one, it was considered rude to stare at someone.

The school obeyed its own set of rules, its own traditions, but that didn't stop the students from gossiping about Sheik's sister.

Once a month or so, a discrete carriage would arrive with a small entourage. The women were all cloaked in heavy veils, their faces always hidden. The students claimed that Sheik's sister was among them.

They thought that she lived in seclusion with the sisterhood. She traveled back and forth between the school and a hilltop temple overseen by clerics.

She and the priestesses usually kept to themselves in the northeastern wing. There were living quarters and a small training room on that side of the school. Some said that because of a temple mandate the clerics had to learn martial abilities. If true, they must have trained in secret.

Samus would meet this girl a second time on a bright sunny afternoon when an assistant teacher came bursting into the training hall, disrupting a practice session.

Master Sheik's sister had gone missing, he said.

Their teacher had been away on business. No one was ever able to keep track of his comings and goings - not even Samus.

They split into separate search parties to comb the surrounding desert and hillside.

After hours of searching, it would be Samus who found her crouched in a small riverbed. Her cloak and veil had been torn off and thrown to the side. She stood alone, tugging at her own hair, making small whispering sounds.

The bounty hunter attempted to approach her from behind, but the girl suddenly looked over her shoulder. Then she jumped up and ran.

Samus pursued her.

The chase did not last long. The girl tripped over her dress and tumbled into a ravine. She lay there in a heap on the ground.

Samus slid down the incline to get to her. The girl lifted her face, dust smeared on her cheeks, sand in her hair, and said something in a language Samus didn't know. She no longer looked scared. Instead, her glazed eyes were fixed on Samus, and her lips were curved into a smile.

She said the same word over and over again.

Insane, Samus thought with cold realization. The girl was in the midst of a psychotic delusion.

But when the bounty hunter held out her hand, she had no hesitation in taking it and allowing herself to be led back to the compound, where her attendants immediately rushed to tend to her.

Samus searched through an intergalactic translation guide but couldn't find the words that Sheik's sister had said to her, sounds that still echoed inside her head.

The next day, when their teacher returned, he came to thank Samus personally.

"'Chosen one,'" he said. "She called you 'chosen one.'"

She had visions, Sheik's sister did. She was kept at the temple because of her ability to ordain prophecies.

When Samus had found her, she had been in trance, receiving a vision.

The clerics were genuinely worried. What she had seen could have been the end of all of them, their kingdom, their way of life, and the entire world they knew.

**x x x**

"No one knows your heart, Ike."

He felt those words at his back. He wanted to look behind him but resisted the urge. There would be no one there if he turned. It was just a memory, imaginary pain.

The child who walked next to him glanced up, a question in his eyes.

Ike shook off the feeling of unease. "I think we're almost there."

The boy nodded. He carried a pink animal in his arms. Both the boy and his pet shivered in the winter chill.

The wind tossed his cape like a flag as Ike worked his way up the hillside. A light snowfall had buried the grass beneath a thin layer of white.

They reached the edge of town, and the boy looked exhausted. They stopped. The boy put down the his pet. He pulled the green cap from his head and hunched over, trying to catch his breath.

The morning rush had filled the streets. Vendors had already set up their stalls.

Ike had known too many roads. This town was the same as most tournament towns. For the rest of the year, it barely registered on the map. The most interesting thing to happen was probably the installation of a new street lamp when they switched over from the oil-burning ones to the crystal-activated models. In the evening, he bet people gathered together at their neighbors' homes, eating roasted seeds by the fire, and the kids tried to catch fireflies under the light of the moon.

He'd known that, once, however briefly.

He watched the faces of the men who passed him on the street. It was easy to tell apart a local and a traveler. Locals belonged to a place. Travelers merely moved through it.

None of the faces looked like that of men who would train their sons to be killers, men who pushed their boys day after day, a wooden stick in place of a sword, men who knew that kindness in training amounted to cruelty on the battleground. Men who had killed, who had received medals and honor and money for it.

It seemed hard to believe that the world could be made of anything else other than fathers who died and left behind their work, unfinished. Or sons with heads full of vengeance and regrets, lessons from childhood (once ignored or misunderstood) now taken to heart.

A group of children ran by, urgency and excitement in their movements. Ike's companion turned his head as they passed, eyes wide, lips parted.

The wind wrapped itself around Ike's exposed skin, sharp and cold.

A voice, somewhere inside his head, suddenly reminded him:

"Maybe the natural state of the world is complete stillness. Human beings bring chaos and turmoil into it, and when they are gone, maybe the winds will calm and Order will rein once again."

Ike felt those words cutting into his bones. They belonged to someone he had known. A very dead someone.

He looked over his shoulder. There was nothing behind him.

The wind played with his hair. He looked down at his traveling companion. "Are you ready?"

The boy nodded.

"Stay close to me," Ike said. Together, they set off into the heart of town.

**x x x**

_Tabuu's World: A Brief History (excerpt from Master Chief Magazine)_

The planet has passed through the hands of numerous private owners, all of whom sought to turn it into a successful business enterprise. It was once the interest of mining companies who wanted the numerous mountain ranges for fuel minerals and the glaciers for diamonds. Amusement parks and entertainment mega-plexes had also been discussed. Multiple projects aimed to develop the planet began all at once. And then, after a series of interplanetary recessions, construction and development all but ground to a halt.

Cash flow dwindled, as did rule of law. Workers' settlements declared independence. Due to the neglect of corporate management, no one challenged them.

Realizing that they were losing more money on the planet that they could ever hope to profit off of it, the owners finally put the planet on the market.

Because of this, Tabuu's World has often been cited by economists as a great opportunity that fell either to poor planning, corporate greed, or socialist bureaucracy (depending on which school of thought the economist preferred).

However, views on the potential of Tabuu's World changed with the discovery of fuel minerals in its many deserts. Of primary interest recently is Compound-2264, a theoretical compound that has never been successfully created in synthesis labs. Said by geologists to be non-existent, it nevertheless appears to be found on Tabuu's World as a naturally-occurring substance. When refined, it converts into a fuel that is theorized to be capable of powering starships and deep space exploration vessels on the timescale of millennia.

At the time of this discovery, the planet was under the private ownership of a terrestrial aristocratic family. Like most non-Spacer influenced cultures, the indigenous populations observe customs that would be unacceptable to the civilized worlds. The family, coming from such a background, has a reputation for decadence and depravity. The patriarch rules under the title of Emperor (see "Rulers of Tabuu" under Featured Biographies). Among his many eccentricities is a fighting tournament, held annually, in which competitors engage each other in blood sport for a prize that varies each year.

This year, the Emperor has declared that the prize will be the planet itself.

Because of the existence of Compound-2264, the Galactic Federation has expressed interest in sending its own emissary to participate…

**x x x**

Roy listened as Marth told his story about his first major defeat. They lay together in the dark. Roy had his arm secured around Marth's waist, feeling his own steady heartbeat against the other's back.

In the silence that followed, Roy got to thinking.

His first defeat had been to a nobody. He didn't remember the guy's name or face. He only remembered being on his back, the two of them locked together in a desperate wrestling match. Roy was losing. The other guy had dealt more damage. And then it came as quick as a flash of lighting: Roy suddenly had his teeth on his opponent's neck, and he bit down hard.

He remembered the splash of blood on his tongue. He remembered being angry and not letting go.

He lost that fight. The other guy healed up and, after a year, climbed up through the ranks to become a top contender. Roy stayed in the lower tiers. No one ever looked at him the same way again. He had no future. He would never be champion.

Now, he had fallen even further.

The street lamps burned all night through the curtains of the inn's window. It was a hard gold light. Roy couldn't sleep. He slid a hand over the skin of Marth's abdomen. Then he found, with his mouth, the mound of scar tissue at the back of his friend's neck. Roy set his teeth around it and bit down, gently, with care.

Marth tensed, back arching, and woke up. He reached back, over his shoulder, to run fingers through Roy's hair.

In the dark, they were about equally blind.

When Marth rolled over onto his stomach, Roy moved with him, until he had him pressed down against the stiff mattress, the coarse blanket tangled around them both.


	15. sober

Disclaimer: This story contains characters that are not the property of the author. The author has made no profit from this publication.

A/N: Edited. Why did no one tell me how bad the intro was the first time?

* * *

**Chase the Sun:**  
**Sober**

Tonight, Marth had left a cup of wine for him by the door, as he often did. A stroke of mercy. Roy took it and tossed out the wine into the dirt yard. He set the empty cup back down and rose to his feet, shaky, nauseated. Pain tugged him backwards. He leaned forward, tried to hold it down. He wanted to throw up.

These days, Marth had been getting up early. He said that the light was the best in the morning. So he trained at dawn.

But Roy hadn't seen high noon all winter, much less daybreak. The tremors got him the worst in the earliest hours of the day. His body wouldn't stop shaking, and the skin on the back of his neck was always cold. He'd sit with his head against his knees and wait for the room to stop spinning.

Sleep was the only thing that made it stop. He didn't wake until the late afternoon most days, as the sun edged closer to the horizon. Sitting up brought a pounding pressure to his head, bad enough that he could barely hold it up. The pain never seemed to ease. He walked like he was submerged in water, halfway close to drowning. The world around him became an ever present mirage.

Roy did his training at night, in the back lot of the inn lit up with torches.

As he stepped out on this night, like any other night, he felt someone's hands at his back, ready to tie his belt and scabbard to his waist. Roy had spent weeks practicing just drawing his sword. Now he reached behind and caught Marth's fingers.

"Not tonight." He picked up the wooden training sword. "Spar with me."

He lit another torch. Marth complied, moving into position in the ring they had drawn into the dirt, another practice sword in hand. Roy watched him carefully, then went to light another torch.

"That isn't necessary," Marth said, but Roy ignored him. "I hope you'll refrain from burning down the establishment."

Roy shrugged. "Rent's too damn high anyway."

Marth's first strike came fast, but Roy stepped out of the way with little effort. The next swing clipped his shoulder. Roy, head still heavy, dodged the next flurry. He watched the tip of Marth's weapon, watched the turn of his wrist. When Marth came at him with an overhead cut, Roy batted it away. The weapon flew out of Marth's hand and landed in the dirt.

Marth didn't retrieve it. He stood still, breathless, chest heaving.

Roy lowered his weapon. He looked away. "Question. If you had to do this alone, without me, do you think you could?"

There was a moment of silence. "Yes," Marth said.

But he had hesitated.

"What are you really asking me, Roy?"

Roy picked up the sword and offered it to Marth. After a moment, Marth took it. Roy went back to his position across from him once again. He raised his weapon.

"Let's do this for real now."

Mercy in training only amounted to death in combat. That was something Roy's old master used to say.

* * *

The clinking of cups drew his attention to the bar across the street. Soft yellow light drifted out of its windows, carried into the dark by murmuring voices.

Roy shuddered under two layers of clothes. His head felt hollow and away. A dull pain had him at the temples, sharp pangs radiating across his skull.

He turned and slipped towards the light.

Inside, into a warmth he barely felt, he ignored the sight of wine flowing into wide cups. He asked the bartender if there was a place around here that sold matches.

There was a place, the man told him, but it was closed for the night.

The patrons looked him over, took in the sight of the sword, the cape draped over one shoulder.

In his pocket, Roy clutched a few coins in a tight grip.

The bartender knew him from before, when he'd come in looking for work.

Like most towns on the fighting circuit, the place didn't have much going for it. It had one main road that was paved. Most houses were wood structures, except for the brick and mortar buildings of the downtown - that and the stadium where tournaments were held.

Just outside of town, there were a few small factories and farm land.

He'd tried there too. But after they had seen his arm, no one was interested.

In the bar now, Roy glanced at the jugs of wine passed between men and women in worker's coveralls.

No one had any matches. He left.

His hand trembled in his pocket, his heart fluttered. Pressure collected at his temples. He blinked away the bright flashing spots that sometimes danced into his vision. Shaking his head only brought him more pain.

Roy tried a few other open restaurants and shops. It took him over an hour, but he found one place that sold matches. He bought a box.

On the way back, it started to rain. He cursed and tucked the matches under his cape. There was an umbrella in the room at the inn. But holding an umbrella meant he wouldn't have a free hand.

The street lights burned crystallized oil, and everything looked bronzed over. He felt like he was sleepwalking.

Footsteps stomped behind him. Someone had followed him from the bar. He was sure of it, and he didn't like that. His head still felt as though it'd vaporize into steam at any moment.

Roy ducked into an alleyway. Heavy footsteps splashed after him.

He waited until the bulky form came within arms reach. He struck at that moment, but his fist sank into a soft, bulging gut. The folds of flesh caught his arm all the way up to the elbow. Before he could react, the force of impact came rebounding back at him and threw him into the wall.

_"Sonofabitch!"_

A fist was suddenly coming at him. He ducked as it slammed into the wall behind him, knocking out chunks of brick. Roy jabbed his attacker in the inner thigh, earning a cry of pain from the man. Then Roy shot up and smashed his forehead into his assailant's face. The heavyset man went down.

Roy dropped on top of him and got a knee pressed to the man's throat.

"Bastard..." the downed fighter croaked. The air smelled like garlic. Roy choked on it, leaning away, and like that, lost his balance. The round man shoved him off, and he hit the wet ground.

"You're still a tough little shit."

More talking only made the air more putrid. Roy covered his nose and mouth and sucked in a few breaths, backing away. The other man slowly rose to his feet, but kept his distance.

"The fuck, Wario. This about the gambling thing? Thought we were even. Leave me the fuck alone."

Wario wiped the rain and blood off his chin. His nose had been bashed in, not for the first time. "Not here about that." He tossed a piece of paper onto the ground. "There's a bounty on your head."

Roy glanced at the flyer before turning his eyes back on Wario. "Since when did you hunt bounty?"

"Since we hit a recession, I guess."

Roy let his hand rest on his sword, let Wario see him do it. The cape fell over his right shoulder. The other man couldn't see his injury. "Lay off, asshole. Your reputation's worse than mine. You turn me in, you turn yourself in."

"I'm clean these days, Roy boy."

"The fuck you are."

"The Feds ain't after me, brat. Last I checked, they're after you." At Roy's glare, Wario shrugged in an exaggerated motion. "Not my fault. I don't work for them. You fucked up. You took it to some of their people. But I'm a nice guy, so here's the deal. For a small fee, I can keep the heat off you."

"Not interested."

"Yeah? You don't think I can do that? You don't know, but this little town is about to blow the fuck up. I can introduce you to the right people. Otherwise, I don't see much of a future for you, not with the dogs on your tail." Wario's grin showed off rows of big blocky teeth. "Looks like you're dragging around a ball and chain too."

Wario paused, waiting for a biting reply.

Instead, he heard a clink and the fast slide of steel.

"Or," Roy said, "we can do things my way."

* * *

The room was dark when Roy pushed the door open. The lamp on the table had been out of oil for weeks.

Marth went to bed every day a few hours after the sun went down. He kept a strict routine. He usually left the window curtain pulled back so that the light from the street could seep into the room. It was an industrial town. The street lamps burned well into the night.

As Roy hung up his cape and worked his way out of his shoes, Marth sat up on the bed.

"Roy."

"Yeah."

"What happened?"

"Nothing."

"I smell blood."

"Don't worry, it's not mine."

"Roy - "

"I got the matches." He hated the excitement in his voice, the eagerness. The box was wet. He had dropped it during the scuffle with Wario. He hadn't opened it on the way home to check on the contents, afraid that the rain would get inside.

He crouched down in front of the fireplace and drew out a match with shaky fingers, realizing that it felt wet. He clamped the match between his teeth and struck it against the side of the box. Nothing happened. He tried again and again until the head snapped off. Then he went to a second. Then a third. A fourth.

By the fifth failure, Roy threw the box across the room. Match sticks went flying.

"Roy - "

"The rain. Fuck everything."

"Roy - "

"Rain's turning to ice outside and I can't make the goddamn fire."

Marth shifted. "Come here, Roy."

"My head hurts."

"Roy - "

Roy jumped up and threw his fist into the wall. A panel cracked. He slammed his forehead into it. The pain was nothing. Nothing.

Marth sighed. Roy heard him rising from the bed, knew that he had the fingers of one hand feeling for the wall, knew that he'd walk along the wall until he found Roy, turned him around, and wrapped both arms around his neck.

"Do you feel better now?"

"My head fucking hurts."

"Lie down."

Marth drew him across the room, and Roy fell onto the bed. His head felt like it was being crushed. Marth pulled the blanket over him, and Roy snagged him by the shirt, pulled him down and close. Then they were together under the blanket, and that was better, somehow.

"You're cold," Roy muttered. "I'm sorry, fucking sorry."

Marth stroked his hair a little but didn't say a thing. His fingers wandered from Roy's shoulder and down his back. Looking for wounds.

Finally, Marth said, "Let me get you a drink."

"No."

"You're in pain."

"No."

"How long do you want to keep doing this?"

"I'm sorry, Marth. I'm sorry - "

"You already said - "

"No. Falcon, Marth. The captain. Remember? That bastard. You fought him. Right? After I found out that he beat you, I went looking for him. I caught up with him off-world. Mute City. God, that place sucked. We trained together. He taught me how to beat you. And I still remember. I still know how to do it."

"All right," Marth whispered and kissed his forehead. "Then prove it to me later."

In another life, Roy would have bitten Marth in the neck. And Marth would have flinched and made that soft noise he always did, and Roy would have taken it as a wordless sign of consent, and Roy would have rolled on top of him, and they would have moved together, and it would have been nice.

But now -

Marth pushed Roy onto his back and curled up so that he could lie with his head on Roy's chest. He didn't say it, but Roy knew that he wanted to sleep listening to the heart buried under mounds of scar tissue and bone, to know that it was still beating.

* * *

Life got better when the stadium opened for pre-tournament qualifying matches. The arena became crowded with hopefuls, even though the stands were still mostly empty. Spectators and challengers slowly poured into town. The place gradually started waking up.

During the first round of eliminations, Roy fought off a migraine and wrecked some kid a few years under him, whose face he immediately forgot, whose name he never learned. He missed the wine because he felt their slings and punches now, and everything hurt. He lost points for spitting blood at another opponent's feet after the guy had gestured toward Roy's missing arm and sneered. He wasn't sneering anymore when Roy's knee planted into his jaw and shattered a couple teeth.

Roy won that match. That was all he cared about.

At the end of day, after he'd been given his qualifying papers and a pre-fight bonus, Roy crawled back to their room at the inn and collapsed onto the bed. He drifted in and out of sleep. Marth returned some time later, set his own qualifying papers onto the table next to Roy's, and began heating water on the stove.

"Tell me you got this, babe," Roy murmured from underneath the blanket.

"What did you call me?"

"Nothing."

Marth set a bowl of broth on the table by the bed. "Eat something, Roy."

"Can't."

He felt Marth's weight on the mattress. Those hands, again, started stroking his hair.

"The opening ceremony is tomorrow," Marth said.

"Am I supposed to be there?"

"Yes. The festival starts in the morning. Then the emperor is going to lift the rule of blood."

"The fuck?"

"The law against murder is being lifted from the stadium grounds to protect any fighter who kills in the tournament."

"Sounds like my kind of party."

Marth stroked his temple. "Don't be late or you'll be disqualified."

"I'll be there."

"Roy..."

"Hm?"

"If it gets too hard for you, you don't have to do this. Leave it to me. I can do it on my own."

"I said I'll be there. Don't doubt me. It makes me so fucking tired."

"Roy..."

He snagged Marth's hand and kissed his knuckles. "Relax, sweetheart. Didn't I kill for you before? I'm your little soulless vessel of destruction, right?"

* * *

Crowded stands greeted him at the stadium on tournament day. The sky was bright. He saw the grand halls in front of the arena, saw the spectators gathered in colorful hats and clothes.

Marth waited with the other contestants while the gates opened into the arena. He had taken care in dressing himself, had smoothed out his cape and made sure the tears were patched. His hair was combed, tiara neatly set in place, boots polished. Appearances were a part of the fighting arts, no matter what Roy proclaimed.

Now, as the gates parted, Marth briefly ran fingers over his uniform and hair, checking for anything that might be out of place. He glanced around for Roy. The lack of light in the inner stadium chambers made it hard to see. His friend was late. No doubt Roy would have found him by now if he had arrived.

Marth put that thought away in the back of his mind and walked in with the other fighters. The crowds welcomed them with roaring applause.

Some of the competitors turned and waved at their fans. Others stoically marched forward.

Marth had studied each of the remaining fighters carefully. In the months leading up to the tournament, he had woken up early and headed to the training grounds just to stand and watch the fights, or even catch a glimpse of each fighter's routine, just as he had this morning, hours before Roy could even be roused from sleep. When the shadows would close in on his vision, as the daylight waned, he would close his eyes and try to listen.

He could no longer see the birds that flew low on the horizon at sunset. He only heard them, sometimes, crawing at each other.

They came to a stop at the center of the wide, open arena. In front of them and overlooking them, the imposing figure of the emperor stood at the high balcony. Marth only saw his elaborate costume of gold and jewels. He wore a cape and a robe painted in dark colors, brown and black, a contrast to the rest.

His voice, booming and deep, commanded the attention of all those gathered in the arena.

But Marth only half listened to the emperor's speech. Somewhere close to him, he heard a soft growl. It was an animal's, a dog, or a...

He turned his head slightly to the left. A young woman's voice coaxed the animal into silence.

"Watch out for that one," Roy had said to him on the day of the qualifying matches, "the girl who fights with a wolf. They're vicious in combat. And something about those two is...a little off, you know?"

Marth turned back to the spectacle before him. Applause rolled out like thunder when the emperor finished his speech.

_Roy_, Marth thought, battling his own apprehension, _where are you?_

* * *

Outside, the clamor and noise of a celebration woke him from heavy sleep. Laughter, excitement. People had been arriving from neighboring settlements for the festival. They had taken to the streets early that morning.

Roy rolled over, away from the sunlight, and pulled the covers over his head. His body shook uncontrollably. Again, he was ill. But he wasn't going to lose it. Wasn't. He was going to hold on and keep his shit together.

Hours passed. He waited for the tremors to subside, for the dull ache in his skull to dissipate.

When he finally sat up, head still pounding, the afternoon sun sat low in the sky. Marth had left a bowl of water on the table, covered with a lid. Next to it sat a few sealed rations, the only thing that Roy could live on these days.

He drank the water. His throat felt dry, even afterward. He managed to get the sword and scabbard on with one hand. He'd been practicing.

The room threatened to tilt away from him when he rose. He closed his eyes and let it pass, surprised when he didn't fall over onto the floor. He got his boots on with some effort. His head still hurt. He was getting used to that. Couldn't do anything about that anyway.

Outside, the streets of the once quiet town were full. Roy blocked it out. He moved through it all with a purpose, a goal.

In the distance, the stadium was lit up with enough torches that it might as well have been on fire.

**chapter end**

* * *

A/N: Alcohol withdrawal is a hell of a bitch, ain't it , Roy?


	16. the killing stage

A/N: I realize that I go online with first drafts way more often than I should.

Disclaimer: Contains characters and concepts that are not the property of the author. Characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. No profit is to be made from this work of fiction.

* * *

**Chase the Sun**

the killing stage

In the days leading up to the tournament, Marth had the same dream over and over again. He was never able to remember much of it. He only knew that it terrified him. Even after waking, a sense of malignancy always remained.

His shuddering even woke Roy from deep sleep.

And in the dark, Roy's arm would secure itself around Marth's waist. In the dark, he would promise things that Marth wanted to believe.

Marth had come to rely on that presence, the warmth against his back when the nights got cold. He had watched the fallouts every morning, when Roy struggled to dress himself, or even just to open his eyes and rise from bed while the sun was still out. Some days, he failed at even that, losing to the pain and tremors that kept his body curled and useless under the sheets. If he rose, it was to give in to the rage that made him smash the last of the wine bottles.

Roy would always be like that, a slave to his anger. But even with his bouts of volatility and the occasional coldness when he lapsed into self-pity, his warmth was still a thing missed from Marth's side during the walk down the corridor that led to the emperor's arena. The masked guards who escorted him said nothing. The light of their lanterns did not travel very far into the dark.

Marth glanced through the window, caught sight of the sun low on the horizon. It would be a little bit brighter outside. The shadows of evening had crept inside the hallway.

He fought the urge to reach for the wall, to run his fingers along the stone. He had gotten a good look at the stadium earlier in the day, when the daylight was at its peak. The coliseum seemed old, but there were signs of a recent restoration: modern lanterns implanted in the nooks meant for torches, a clock tower that chimed on the hour, moved by precise gear-work. The pictographs carved into the stone at various entrances had been touched up with gold and silver paint.

There was something odd and impermanent about the place. The townspeople spoke of politics and war and changes in some central hub of governance far removed from them. They lived at an intersection, or so it seemed to Marth, between various conflicting forces. They were farmers and traders and ex-miners. They knew each other, but they did not belong to any one nation.

One morning, Marth had found a crowd of people gathered at the crest of a hill. He had stopped and joined them. Out in the wide open fields, next to clusters of ancient ruins, the sunlight had gleamed off the metallic skins of several large and strangely colored machines. Those, he had realized, were the ships of Federation citizens.

They did not mingle with others. When they arrived, they took up board in a separate district that was reserved for them. Even in the stadium, they had their own sectioned seating.

The townspeople loved to gossip about them and laugh at their awkward ways, but there was an underlying bitterness to it all. Marth had spotted a small group of the tourists once when they passed through the main square. They were tall and ornamentally dressed. As common with Spacers, they wore masks and kept their faces hidden.

They clearly did not belong to the town, nor to the world.

The town had its routine. In the early morning hours, the old women would gather in the square and sell vegetables and hand-woven blankets. Marth had watched them double their efforts in an attempt to produce enough wares to make a decent profit from the tournament festivities. When he occasionally stopped by to bargain over their goods, he listened closely. They spoke to each other in a tongue similar to his native language. He was able to decipher much of it. The old women of the market did not gossip; they talked business.

The emperor called a tournament every time there was trouble in the capitol. The diviners had read the stars and concluded that something had begun to unravel in the seat of power on a distant planet from which the Federation ruled. There was something in the ancient lands that the Spacers wanted, something that would save them and keep their empire from spiraling out of control and dissolving like salt in the ocean.

But who knew the mind of the emperor? They only knew that the wrath and killing sprees of his youth had been tempered by some kind of gentile old age at precisely the time when his people would have benefited from his old ruthlessness directed at outside forces.

Marth asked no one about the tournament. He only listened at the pubs and markets while others talked. The emperor must have been depraved, everyone said, to lift the rule of blood, to offer up the entire planet to the winner. The latter was a condition that had been revoked in past. Would he go through with it this time? The Federation was watching, always watching.

Marth did not want the planet. But he knew what he would do if he were to win it.

He was a prince without a nation and nobody's champion. And yet...

In the hall of the stadium, the darkness closed in around him. Ahead of him, a source of light waited at the entrance to the battle stage. He couldn't see the details at a distance. It only became clear when he arrived at the entrance. A wooden bridge hung up by rope led to a stone platform in the center of the arena, high above the ground. Over the main stage, a series of smaller platforms had been raised. At their supports, a complex network of gears controlled their movements. They could change direction or shape at any moment during a fight.

Two fighters waited for him on the other side, their faces only half visible under the light of the torches. The taller, more menacing of the two, cast a familiar shadow, an aura that Marth recognized without a doubt. It came from his nightmares. It was the key to memories he wanted to forget. It brought him back to Red Canyon, made him remember how Red Canyon had changed him. The presence of this fighter here was the answer to the feeling of unease that would strike him sometimes when he walked the streets of town alone. In a foreign place, unsheltered, unprotected, he had felt the weight of something on his back, something predatory. And he had wondered if something had followed him from the desert. Goroh had found them, after all. Any one of their other enemies could have done the same. But no matter how he had searched his surroundings with his eyes, he had never found the source of it.

As the days dragged on, common sights for him had become strange and unrecognizable. People melded with their shadows, gliding on the ground, and Marth had found himself surrounded by alien objects, things wholly unfamiliar until he touched them. Flowers on trees, laundry on a line, a bucket at a well. The world he knew was vanishing.

There were times when Marth feared the approaching darkness. But now, on the stage of battle, he felt no fear, not with his enemy within reach. Those who carried the sword could only live one way, by accepting death every time they lifted the blade.

A part of him wanted to call out to the only other person he had ever known to understand this, the one with whom he had survived years of hard training together, the one who had lived through Red Canyon with him.

Marth took a moment to note the position of the sun in the sky. He spotted his opponents on the other side of the platform. Then he stepped out onto the bridge. It swayed with his weight. He went alone.

Roy wouldn't make it in time, he knew.

It didn't matter. Nothing promised between them in whispers in the dark would ever amount to anything, no matter how fiercely any of them wished it to be. None of those vows, spoken or unspoken, carried any weight here. The only thing that mattered here was the kill.

The one-time prince advanced onward and drew his sword.

* * *

Death lived in Zoda's shadow, an ever-present companion.

The bluish-grey pallor of his face caught the attention of the stadium crowd when he stepped into the ring. Fighters were commonly greeted with cheers and applause. Zoda earned a more subdued reception. Those who did voice their thoughts, did so in whispers marked in fear.

Zoda couldn't stop smiling.

These were the common folk. Peasants. They had never and would never see the things he had seen.

Zoda had lived for over a hundred years. Not even the sum total of every single breathing meat sack in the coliseum could have measured up in worth to his life experiences.

He'd been born before the Federation. He'd slept in a stasis chamber for centuries, while time marched on, while the world changed, while humankind expanded into the stars. He'd woken in a new universe, a place of infinite resources just waiting to be exploited.

He lived for the terror he could invoke in the worlds' citizens. Not for power, because what sort of idiot wanted that kind of responsibility? No, Zoda had figured out his place in the cosmic order. His waking from cold sleep as part of a scientific experiment conducted on imprisoned criminals of his time was in fact nothing less than a rebirth. Only gods were reborn. The other condemned men had perished, hadn't they? Withered by time to dry husks inside their mechanical capsules. He had seen their remains after the latch on his pod had cracked, after the emergency system had administered his first jolt of an enhanced adrenaline-derived drug. It had brought him back from suspension into the world of the living, from dead silence into a screaming that tore out of his chest and lungs and rang on and on in his own ears.

He had lived. He had been chosen. He was destined to one day unlock the secret of the universe's creation, to bring chaos, to destroy the social orders that challenged universal entropy. The lives he claimed on his path to unity with the gods of chaos did not matter. All lives belonged to him. Fate had decided it.

And then, from light-years away, Tabuu's World had called to him. The planet itself wanted something of him. He never questioned it. The world was a network of biorhythms. It fed his internal battery, the device implanted into his brain stem while he was in cold sleep. He learned that biorhythms could be harnessed. For each body, there exist multiple power levels. Omnipotence followed perfect form. He needed a more perfect form.

It had taken him nearly 70 years to master the art of uncoding and harnessing biorhythms. By that time, he had stolen it from nearly 5,000 different lives on hundreds of different planets. None were perfect matches to his own, but summed together they were enough to sustain him.

He had only ever found one perfect match.

* * *

Those who witnessed the fight would later claim that Zoda stood at about twice the height of the swordsman, a strange monster with long spidery limbs and a crazed grin. His partner, by contrast, was a short squat man in a yellow cap.

The odds stood two to one. Even those who knew the name Marth of Altea were hesitant to place bets in the swordsman's favor.

Wario laughed at the sight. The fighters' game book listed Marth as an A-tier swordsman. Even so, he was out-matched here. Who in their right mind showed up alone to a team battle? Who would show up to a fight dressed like something out of the last century, wearing women's jewelry, and carrying a plain steel sword of all things?

"We got this," he said to his partner. He didn't like Zoda, who really belonged in a padded box out in orbit along with the rest of the Federation's criminally deranged, but their partnership was one of convenience. "All we gotta do is - "

Zoda cut him off with a shriek that could have woken the dead. His beam sword sparked alive, a violent red flare against the last light of day. The twisted look on his face told Wario that Zoda had jacked up his personal cocktail of narcotics before the fight. There would be no reasoning with the asshole now.

For an A-tier fighter, Wario decided that Marth was good at looking indifferent, which meant he couldn't have been the brightest, considering he was about to get his pretty little head lobbed off.

Zoda's sword buzzed like an insect as he swung it. Its red beam left trails of light in the air, afterimages burned into the retina. Marth leaped back, just enough to stay beyond reach. But the beam came at him again and again. Zoda attacked in a whirlwind. Marth hopped backwards, creeping closer and closer to where the platform ended.

Wario realized what was happening. "You idiot! The edge!"

Marth parried the last strike from Zoda. The steel of his sword made a sharp, grinding sound when it clashed against the beam blade. Marth grabbed the taller fighter and twisted, tripping Zoda over an expertly placed leg, and threw him towards the edge. The beam sword fell to Marth's feet. Zoda toppled over into empty air.

The crowd screamed, wondering if a fighter had already been eliminated.

For Zoda, it almost did end for him right then, but the drugs circulating through his system had increased his body's responses. At the last moment, he grabbed the ledge with one hand.

Before Marth could finish him, Wario attacked. Marth dodged behind him, narrowly avoiding his snapping jaws. Wario, faster than his body shape suggested, carried a secret arsenal and cared not for finesse or appearances. He had jaws as wide as a shark's and blocky teeth big enough to break bones.

Marth swiped at him with the sword, caught him ill-prepared, and launched him toward the sky. Wario spun and grabbed onto a piece of rope dangling from one of the upper platforms. With a grin, he scrambled up the rope and onto the platform. Marth narrowed his eyes at the sight. Then remembering Zoda, he turned to the ledge and found no one there.

Unknown to Marth, Zoda had clung to the edge and climbed around with his hands to another side of the stage. He pulled himself up, finding himself at Marth's back. He struck with his bare hands.

The tip of Marth's sword stabbed into his chest. It hit the strongest part of his armor, and Zoda only stumbled a little. But the blade came back around, aimed to take his head. Zoda ducked low against the floor. He skittered away, backwards, like an insect. In his mind, the madman tried to think. He needed a way to get around the sword.

Seemingly unimpressed by Zoda's crabwalking, Marth nonchalantly tossed an object at him. Zoda recognized it as the beam sword and snatched it up. He gave no thought as to why his opponent would grant him a favor.

For Marth however, it was because the sun had sunk below the horizon. Even with the torches surrounding the stage, he could no longer see much. But the beam blade cast its own light. If Zoda had it, Marth could find him in the dark.

The beam flashed to life, revealing the face that haunted Marth in his dreams. But instead of rushing in as he had before, Zoda's free hand made a flicking motion. Three small pellets flew at Marth, blooming into spiked stars. He twisted and swayed, avoiding the three, but there were two more that he had not seen. They cut into him, one grazing his cheek, the other lodging itself into his arm.

At this point, Wario had managed to jump to the highest platform on the stage. He caught his breath, then swallowed a power mushroom. As its magic washed over him, he lit a bomb and took a wild leap off the platform. As he plummeted, he curled himself up like a cannonball.

He hit the stage in between Zoda and Marth. The explosion caught all three of them, but only Wario had his health padded by the mushroom.

Marth felt the ground ripped out from under him. He crashed hard into the floor and blacked out for a second or two. Blinking away the confusion, still dazed, he climbed back to his feet, but his motions were entirely automatic, his training taking control of his body. He took a step and crumbled to his knees, falling forward, hands bracing against the stone floor.

He didn't fully realize what had happened, or what was about to happen. The world was dark and empty of sounds. The next thing he knew, he was on the ground completely and someone was pummeling him as he lay there. Heavy fists pounded him relentlessly.

He fought. Or thought he did.

And then his soul tore away, out of his body, and flew back to the desert, and kept flying, flying, out across the mountains and the oceans, back to an old memory of peace, back to a time when he had served a royal family, back when he'd had a purpose, when the training was not for a mere sport but for a cause, a necessary means to an end, before he'd outlived his usefulness. Anri's line was decimated years ago. He'd outlived his own kingdom. And he'd never found another raison d'être.

Pain brought him back to the present, to the emperor's killing stage. Somewhere in the dark, unseen by him, the crowd roared. On his knees, one arm wrenched behind his back, Marth was in trouble. Wario had him, twisting his arm even more, and Marth fought the urge to scream. Fingers were tangled in his hair, and a strong pull jerked his head back, offering his throat to his would-be executioner. Marth was certain that this was how they slaughtered animals. He struggled to move, but his body couldn't offer any resistance.

He'd wanted a better end, at least, not on his knees.

Zoda approached at an unhurried pace. He crouched down in front of Marth and lifted a blade, Marth's own sword, and held it to the swordsman's throat. He said some things that Marth didn't understand. It was all madness in the end. Was there anything else left?

A name rose up in back of Marth's throat, but he pushed it back down. That wouldn't do any good.

He pressed the palm of his free hand against the sword edge in a desperate attempt to stop it from cutting. It bit into his glove.

Triumph widened the sociopath's smile. One hand came to the side of Marth's face and held him in a vise grip. Zoda leaned in, kissed him, and let go. He pressed the blade into Marth's skin, slowly, reverently -

Then the sword clattered to the floor, and Zoda was gone, knocked almost halfway across the stage by something that had smashed into him like a battering ram.

In the distance, cymbals clashed. It was a signal, a new challenger had entered the fray.

Marth couldn't see the assault, but he heard it, the sounds of a fist hammering against flesh and bone, the animal-like howls of the one being beaten. Wario released him, and Marth collapsed to the ground. Wario vented out a colorful string of expletives, only to be cut off suddenly with a loud crack, something breaking. Marth looked up in time to see Wario tossed aside like a sand bag, tumbling past where Zoda lay.

Marth could see it only because Wario was on fire at the time. He felt around with his hands until he found his sword. Then he forced himself to his feet. He bled from the small cut on his neck and from his other injuries.

A familiar body placed itself between him and his opponents.

"Sorry I'm late."

Marth reached forward, grabbed the cape in front of him, and bowed until his forehead was pressed to the back of Roy's head.

He heard the sound of a sword being drawn.

"Can you still fight?"

"Roy..."

"I'm here, Marth."

Still leaning against him, Marth whispered something dangerously close to a prayer. "Yes," he said.


End file.
